The Stroop Effect

The Stroop Effect

Abstract

The following is a short research report to demonstrate the understanding of the purpose, layout and contents of a psychological research report on the stroop effect. Stroop test was introduced in 1935 as a way to test the interference between two different stimuli. Material that is well-learned can interfere with our ability to pay attention to the demands of a particular task. For example, consider a set of colour names in which the names themselves are printed in different coloured inks (e.g, the word “red” printed in the colour blue). When people are instructed to name the ink colour, they sometimes erroneously read the printed colour name instead. This effect is interpreted as showing that meaningful linguistic information is difficult to ignore, and may be processed automatically, resulting in difficulties in focusing attention. This study aims to examine the Stroop effect in reading colour names printed in inks of different colour, compared to a set of nonsense words, also printed in different colours. An experiment was conducted asking individuals to name words and non-words that are printed in different colours. To be consistent, two lists of words were used. One list has colour names and the other list has nonsense words. In making up the lists, thought was given to the following issues: should the number of words in each list be consistent? Should the words be of the same word length in each list? Should the number of colours used in each list be consistent? How many words should be used in each list? As such effort has been made to decide methods to present the words to subjects. The paper would also substantiate on the results of the experiment, and would divulge on a lengthy discussion to substantiate on the found results.

The Stroop Effect

Introduction

Stroop test was introduced in 1935 as a way to test the interference between two different stimuli (Stroop, 1935). The principle in all Stroop tests is based on the "color-word" which is written with a different color of ink than the semantic content implies. Usually, the person shall denote the color of the ink and ignore the written word information. This requires that people must suppress an impulse to read, to interpret the semantic message first. This interference from a conflict situation is often called the Stroop effect (Mitrushina, Boone & D'Elia, 1999). Stroop test paradigm is one of the oldest and most commonly used tasks in cognitive and experimental psychology, with roots going back to one of Wilhelm Wundt students, James Catell (1886). Stroop (1935) article is one of the most cited publications in experimental psychology (Roelofs, 2003).

Stroop test is seen as a test that measures the ability to shift attention set and to suppress the brain's automatic tendency to initially interpret the semantic message of a compound stimulus (Lund-Johansen, Hugdahl & Wester, 1996; Stroop, 1935). This can also be described as an ability to inhibit one of the learned responses in favor of an unusual response (Spreen & Strauss, ...