The Stroop Effect Essay

This experiment investigated the Stroop effect comparing response times between naming colour ink printed in colour-associated words and colour neutral words. Previous research of two-process theories which support Stroop's studies [cited in Edgar:2007] found that automatic processes can interfere with controlled processes. To test this interference further, colour-associated words were employed. Results of this experiment show a statistically significant difference in condition response times, with naming the colour ink printed in colour-associated words taking longer than those in colour

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

In the Stroop task, participants are asked to name the colour of the ink that a colour word is written in, while ignoring the written the word (Goldfarb et al., 2011; Raz et al., 2006). The task is comprised of congruent words, where the ink colour and the written word match and incongruent words, where the ink colour and the written word do not match. The Stroop task has illustrated that participants respond slower and less accurately when the word is incongruent compared to when it is congruent (Goldfarb et al., 2011; Raz et al., 2006). The difference in the accuracy and speed of responses between the congruent and incongruent words is called the Stroop Effect (Goldfarb et al., 2011; Raz et al., 2006). Research has suggested that this occurs

The Stroop effect: how your brain reacts to conflicting information You can’t always believe what you see. You may have learned your colors before you learned how to read, but what happens when there is conflict between both color recognition and word recognition? The Stroop effect uses the conflict between words and colors to show, how your brain reacts to the conflicting information between the two. By psychologist definition the Stroop effect is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task. The Stroop effect was originally written about by a man named John Ridley Stroop in the 1930’s.

In 1935, John Ridley Stroop conducted an experiment at George Peabody College for teachers in the United States. Stroop used 70 college undergraduates as subject in his experiment, he compared times for reading names of colours and naming colours themselves. The aim was to determine if the colour of the word affected the ability to read it. In the experiment, there was three different conditions. In the first condition participants were asked to read words as quickly as possible whereas participants had to name the ink colour in which each word were printed as quickly as possible in second condition. In a third condition (the incongruent condition), participants had to name the ink colour in which each word was printed, but in this condition the words themselves were colour names. For example, the word ‘GREEN’ was presented in the colour orange and you were required to read this colour instead of the word itself. Stroop found that the participants were much slower at naming the ink colours when the stimuli were themselves colours as (third condition), indicating that a possible explanation for the Stroop effect is that people quickly and automatically process the meaning of the word.

The 'Stroop effect', a measure of interference in a reaction time task, was investigated. Twenty undergraduate students of mixed age and gender were each presented with 48 coloured words in turn. These were divided into 16 of each of 3 levels of congruence. The time required to identify the colour of each stimulus was recorded, and related to whether the word presented identified, contrasted with or contained an unrelated meaning to the font colour it was displayed in. This data was collected and compared in order to assess the median time taken to

     I-Mac G3 computers and a program from Old Mississippi University were used to test the lateralized Stroop effect from http://psychexp.olemiss.edu. The name of the actual program was the Lateralized Stroop Experiment. The stimuli used by this program were colors that appeared laterally on a computer screen. Not only did the colors appear laterally but in differing hemispheres on the computer screen. The colors were in the form of written words. For example the word “red” was shown in green font. This was be an example of an incongruent stimulus because the written color word did not agree with the font color shown. An example of

Would practice effect Stroop interference and if so what would this tell us about the Stroop Effect (MacLeod, 1991)? This question was investigated by having participants learn names of Armenian letters and then read the small English and Armenian letters that were composed to form large English and Armenian letters respectively (McLeod, 1991). The results provided evidence that interference was the same for both English (practiced) and Armenian letters (McLeod, 1991). Why then does automatic reading make one susceptible to the Stroop Effect? A possible explanation is attention. During automatic processing, more attention goes to processing the information in dimension a than in dimension b. Processing and naming ink color requires more attention than reading, and so reading will cause interference because it requires less attention (McLeod,

The Stroop task helps us understand the process of our cognitive relation to attention. According to Zysset, Muller, Gabriele and Cramon, “The Stroop interference task requires a person to respond to a specific dimension of a stimulus while suppressing a competing stimulus dimension.” (Zysset et, al., 2001). In this case, The Stroop effect is performed with a challenging task and therefore an interference affects reaction time. Per say if an individual first is asked to read a color word such as YELLOW that appears in the font color red, and then asked to read the word and ignore the color font presented in, there is no level of difficulty associated with this task, as is with a black font color. However the

Klein’s (1964) implicated that the interfering effect became increasingly larger when words were more meaningful and closely colour-related, showing a highly significant difference among conditions (p<0.001). Result of the time increment between the six experimental conditions and the Colour-naming task followed the same pattern as Klein’s (1964): interference was the least for letter strings (nonsense syllables), and increased progressively to low-frequency (rare) neutral words, high-frequency neutral words, high-frequency (common) colour-related words, and other-colour (distant colour-names) words, and greatest interference was found in the classic Stroop (close colour-names) condition. The pattern supported the second hypothesis, that the Stroop effect would be small or lessened for colour-unrelated words such as letter strings (nonsense syllables). Klein (1964) demonstrated that the trend of the time increment among the experimental conditions could be interpreted by our semantic networks. As the processing time was longer for meanings (semantics) of the words than nonsense and phonemics, a reading delay was subsequently created by the effort to restrain one of the conflicting responses. Although the results of the experiment replicated with Klein’s (1964), the time increment among the six experimental conditions were generally smaller than his, which could be possibly explained by the different sample sizes. Compared to the 90 participants in Klein’s experiment, the small sample size of 32 participants in this experiment might generate less varied results due to fewer individual

The Stroop Effect is an interesting, yet complex, phenomenon that presents itself when someone attempts to say a color, yet ends up incorrectly calling the color something else, due to the word being different in some way than the actual color itself (Imbrosciano & Berlach, 2005). For example, imagine a person being asked to name the color of a certain word, such as blue, but instead of saying the correct color, they say what the word spells out, which could be red. This is caused by an interference between the color and the word, leading the brain to process two contrasting pieces of information, which in turns causes a person to not be able to properly focus on the actual task to their best ability (Imbrosciano & Berlach, 2005). The Stroop Effect has been tested in various ways over several decades, as it is a fascinating phenomenon yet easy to test for. In lab, we tested this effect on not only each other, but also on our colleagues outside of the classroom. The findings are very interesting, and worth explaining in extensive detail.

Psychology has been strategically split into three levels of analysis, biological, cognitive, sociocultural. Each one specific to different process in our brain and its functions. The brain remains a mystery but throughout history researchers big and small have taken it into their own hands to help us understand how it works. For this internal assessment a study pertaining to the cognitive level of analysis will be replicated. The study was originally conducted by J. Ridley Stroop in 1935 under the name : Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions. The same study is commonly known as the Stroop Effect. The aim of this study was to identify to what extent does conflicting stimuli affect verbal serial recognition. For the purposes of

This study has been both replicated and modified several times, both showing similar results. They found that reading is an automatic response, meaning that if one were to look at a word then they would read it unconsciously. The interference of color holds an important role in the way a word is processed. In most cases of the Stroop Effect test, interfered reading takes longer than casual reading. Navarrete et al. (2015) demonstrated how semantic interference had a similar effect on reading ability as a whole. In the study, participants were asked to read words that matched a specific picture. The interferences of this study were that some pictures did not have the correct word combined with them. Similar to the Stroop Effect, the results showed how ones response time is longer when there is interference. Similar to the previous mentioned experiements, in this study the purpose is testing the effects of interference on automatic reading in congruent and incongruent words with different colors. This research will help understand the difference interference makes on reaction time of automatic reading. Based on results of previous experiments in this field, it is hypothesized that participants will take

Have you ever asked yourself the question, how do words and color influence what we see and what our brain processes? The uses of words on their own have a much stronger influence over a person’s ability to say the color. The interference that occurs between the different information received by the brain causes a conflict to occur. This happens because of what the words say and what the color of the words mean. J. Ridley Stroop developed his experimental theories to explain this occurrence. The first theory was called "Speed of Processing Theory". He showed that the Interference occurs because, people are able to read words much quicker and to name the color of the word is much more complex. The second theory was called "Selective Attention Theory". Interference occurs because; naming the actual color of the words requires much more attention than reading the

J.R. Stroop conducted an experiment in 1935, where he studied the difference of automatic and controlled processing through his experiment called the Stroop Effect . Automatic processing can be defined as an implicit way of thinking that is unconscious, while controlled processing is intentional. The experiment dealt with Stroop giving the participants two list in different conditions. While the participants read the lists, they were told to read them as fast as possible. In the first condition the people had to read the ink in which the word was written in, for example the color would be red and the word would be “RED”. The second condition was similar except that word and color did not coincide, for example the color would be green but the word would read “PURPLE”. Their processing would be affected during the second condition, and they would have more trouble recognizing the color “green” when the word they read was purple.