The Stroop Effect

708 Words2 Pages

The problem of this study is to find out how the color of a word affects the amount of stroop interference a person shows. The Stroop effect is a phenomenon in which individuals take longer to name the color of words printed in a non-corresponding color, such as the word blue printed in red ink, than when the words are printed in the corresponding color the word designates, such as the word blue printed in blue ink. The Stroop effect is also a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task. The effect is named after John Ridley Stroop. When the name of a color is printed in a color not denoted by the name, naming the color of the word takes longer and is more prone to errors than when the color of the ink matches the name of the …show more content…

In a condition where there are regarding words and colors, if the task is to report the color, the word information arrives at the decision-making stage before the color information which presents processing confusion. Conversely, if the task is to report the word, because color information lags after word information, a decision can be made ahead of the conflicting information. The Selective Attention theory suggests that color recognition as opposed to reading a word, requires more attention, the brain needs to use more attention to recognize a color than to word encoding, so it takes a little longer. The responses lend much to the interference noted in the Stroop effect test. This may be a result of either an allocation of attention to the responses or to a greater inhibition of distractors that are not appropriate responses. The automaticity theory is the most common theory of the Stroop effect. It suggests that since recognizing colors is not an “automatic process” there is hesitancy to respond; whereas, the brain automatically understands the meaning of words as a result of habitual …show more content…

Some pathways, such as reading, are stronger than others, therefore, it is the strength of the pathway and not the speed of the pathway that is important. In addition, automaticity is a function of the strength of each pathway, hence, when two pathways are activated simultaneously in the Stroop effect, interference occurs between the stronger path and the weaker path, more specifically when the pathway that leads to the response is the weaker pathway. The hypothesis for this research is if there is conflicting information, then the reaction time of a person will be slower. If words of colors are in different colored ink, then a person will show greater amounts of Stroop interference. The purpose of this experiment is to find out how stroop effect interference varies with age, reading ability, brain disorder, and word color. Individuals will be selected and grouped based on these characteristics. Data collected from the experiments were compared and put into charts and graphs. The results were compared to those of the same

More about The Stroop Effect

Open Document