STROOP EFFECT AND STROOP TASK

Stroop effect and Stroop Task

Stroop effect and Stroop Task

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of flanker and meaningfulness of the word on Stroop effect by conduction color naming task.

Introduction

It was hypothesized that the incongruent color condition will have a statistically significantly longer response time than the other conditions. Furthermore, it was predicted that stroop interference can be reduced when the incongruent word flanks the colored ink. The final hypothesis is that the meaningfulness of the words can influence the effects significantly.

When you first learn to drive a car, you needed to carefully think through each step of the process. After you drive for few years, you probably do not even seem to think about the steps, but simply initiate a series of movements that seem to proceed without any further influence. When a behavior or skill seems to no longer require direct interaction, cognitive psychologists say it is automatized. Many behaviors can become automatized: typing, reading, writing, bicycling, piano playing, etc. In order to explore the properties of automatized behaviors, cognitive psychologist often put observers in a situation where an automatized response is in conflict with the desired behavior (Francis, Neath, MacKewn & Goldthwaite, 2004). This allows researchers to test the behind-the scenes properties of automatized behaviors by noting their influence on more easily measured behaviors. This demonstration explores a well-known example of this type of influence, the Stroop effect.

Stroop Task

Stroop effect is used to show the interference in the reaction time of a task. For example, in an experiment participants were found to identify the ink colored words slower when the color is incongruent than when the color is congruent. This is despite the fact that they were told to refrain from reading the word.

Semantic priming shows that participants will respond faster when the prime is semantically related to the target than when it is unrelated (McNavin & Besner, 2002). Besner, Stolz and Boutilier (1997) argued that automatic semantic priming in lexical decision-making could be reduced and even eliminated when subject is required to perform a letter search on the prime before responding to the target. The findings show that single work colored letter produce much less interferences compared to the whole word colored letter. If the reading of words is really produce automatically it supposed to show the same interferences. Therefore, Besner et al. concluded that word reading is not an automatic process.

Furthermore, in 1983, Kahneman and Chajczyk stated that the color-irrelevant stimuli could diminish stroop effects. They conducted four experiments using neutral controls like === or XXX, and drew a conclusion which was that a congruent color bar next to a color word could help facilitate the process of the naming color task. Specifically speaking, neutral words such as a row of XXX's were able to dilute both congruence and conflict effects. That means the reaction time (RT) in congruent color name would increase and that in conflicting color name would ...