The Matter Of Paying Attention

The Stroop effect is demonstrated by the reaction time to determine a color when the color is printed in a different color’s name. Participants respond slower or make more errors when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the color of the word. Despite knowing the meaning of the word, participants showed incapability of ignoring the stimulus attribute. This reflects a clear instance of semantic interference and an unfathomed failure of selective attention (Stroop, 1935).

Attention is thought to be selective-focused on one subject at a time. Traditionally, it has been assumed that automatic processing is involuntary, it does not require attention, and is relatively fast; whereas, controlled processing is voluntary, does require attention, and is relatively slow. We can conclude from this that the more we repeat a certain material or tasks the more it becomes automatic and effortless to us.

It was found that tasks involving colors cause more interference. These two studies were similar to the present experiment, as they both required participants to verbally name colors while inhibiting themselves from naming the typed color, as fast as possible.

The Stroop experiment by J. Ridley Stroop in 1935 was performed in order to analyze the reaction time of participant’s stimuli and desired results while also obtaining a collective result of color interference and word reading(Stroop, 1935; Lee & Chan, 2000). In the experiment three forms of the test were given, the first consisting of color patches, the second had the color words printed in black and the other was an incongruent test beaming the color did not match the color word

In Stroop’s (1935) interference article, it was discovered that there is more interference in color naming then color reading. The experiment described in the article tested whether there was more interference from words or from colors (Stroop 1935). Two tests were administered each with a separate control. The RCNd test determined how fast one could read color names where the color was different from the color name while the NCWd test determined how fast one could name colors where the color was different from the word on the page. The mean time for 100 responses increased from 63.3 seconds on the RCNd test to 110.3 seconds on the NCWd test or an

At the beginning stages, reading takes some effort, and conscious attempts at sounding out the letters of each word. As people practice reading skills, they finally learn to read without trying. When a behavior or skill no longer requires direct effort to be completed, cognitive psychologists say it is automatized (CogLab). Automatization is fascinating because it is an important part of daily life. Most people perform a numerous of automatized behaviors quickly and effortlessly. People often think they can multi-task, but classic research by J. Ridley Stroop shows differently. Stroop (1935) demonstrated that if someone is reading information, and other conflicting information is added, the rate in which a person will read the information would slow down. Stroop presented his participant with 100 words, each word spelled out a color, but the ink of the word was different from what it spelled. His participants were asked to report the color of the ink the word represented. The interface of conflicting color stimuli upon the time for reading 100 words caused an increase 2.3 seconds over the normal time for reading the same words printed in black (Stroop, 1935). Stoop found that participants performed slower to read the color of ink when the ink was used to produce color names different from the color of the ink. For example, the participants were slower to identify red ink when it spelled the word blue. The reasoning for this experiment is to test the Strop effect. The experimental hypothesis is that the time of reading the incongruent list of digits will be longer than that of the congruent list of

Abstract The lab test that yielded the Stroop Effect was designed to help us understand how the brain processes information. Experiments that produce the Stroop Effect require the brain to deal with potentially conflicting information. Stroop task produces response conflict because we have a prepotent tendency to process words over retrieving names of colors. It requires the ability to ignore irrelevant textual information and inhibit oneself from reading the words aloud.

The aim of this experiment was to basically analyze how fast the brain can perceive color and describe words simultaneously with the Stroop Effect theory. The Stroop Test is also done to determine new findings on the human’s brain automaticity and how it processes certain functions. In reference, to the independent and dependent variables involved, the independent variable in this experiment would be the color word followed by the conflicting color and the dependent would be the time that it took for the applicant to make a decision. At the conclusion of the lab, applicants were to record their results as well as the group data results and new findings of how the brain functions under certain processes. However, the age differences and the reading comprehension levels of the applicants involved, may have also caused an error due to the lack in understanding of the of time intervals in the ending data.

Many students or civilians have participated in the stroop task and have some knowledge of what the phenomenon entails. The stroop effect has been explored empirically, theoretically and computationally by cognitive and developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists in more than 500 papers over the past sixty years (beresen, stolz, boutiler 1997). Although the task has been change over the past few decades, the premise of the research is to use specific questions in attention literature to present the effectiveness of selective attention as previously mentioned. The stimuli, incongruent and congruency items were the two levels used. However, to manipulate the levels, the incongruent items displayed how attention operates when the participants had to pay attention to the color information and ignore the irrelevant word that is simultaneously

Have you ever wondered why it is challenging to complete assigned tasks? Although sometimes lack of motivation and attention are the usual explanations, interference is a common and overlooked reason, too. Interference is when an automatic process hinders your ability to complete the assigned task, and it can be studied when the assigned task and automatic process are occurring simultaneously. Investigating the role of interference in completing tasks has been a long-term investigation in psychology. The most influential work done to test interference is Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions by J. Ridley Stroop. He created the original methods of testing interference. Stroop’s (1935) experiment presented inherent and conflicting stimuli simultaneously to the subjects without any previous exposure. The inherent stimuli created were color names written in an incongruent text

The distribution of attentional resources has been modeled in two forms. The first involving the idea that there is a single pool of resources, which can be divided freely. The second model suggests that there are multiple pools of specific modality resources (Sternberg &

Kanheman (1973) put forward the capacity/resource allocation model of attention. This is one of the best known models and suggests that humans have a limited amount of processing capacity and whether two or more tasks can be performed together

This theory explains the process of finding features in an attention search and the difficulty of conjunction searches. The human mind has mental maps that show the features in our visual field (Psych 240 Lecture, 9/18/16). In the research article discussed, in order to be able to distinguish the targets from the distractors, it was important for the participants to utilize this theory. Features of the letters and digits help the participant capture what letter or digit is required while avoiding the

The brain’s recognition of objects and labels is instantaneous because of which incongruent stimuli greatly interfere in the brain’s ability to correctly label objects. The goal of our research was to examine the effects of incongruent labels on response time, illustrated through the Stroop test. The Stroop test is a well-known visual processing test created to determine how the cognitive process can be inhibited by what is seen and interpreted visually. Our specific Stroop task approached the interference between shapes and words, rather than colors and words. Participants were asked

We are replicating J.R. Stroop’s original experiment The Stroop Effect (Stroop, 1935). The aim of the study was to understand how automatic processing interferes with attempts to attend to sensory information. The independent variable of our experiment was the three conditions, the congruent words, the incongruent words, and the colored squares, and the dependent variable was the time that it took participants to state the ink color of the list of words in each condition. We used repeated measures for the experiment in order to avoid influence of extraneous variables. The participants were 16-17 years of age from Garland High School. The participants will be timed on how long it takes them to say the color of the squares and the color of the words. The research was conducted in the Math Studies class. The participants were aged 16-17 and were students at Garland High School. The results showed that participants took the most time with the incongruent words.