Conflicting Mental Tasks Reveal About Thinking: The Stroop Effect

Have you ever wondered why we see illusions in different ways or why we say a word instead of a color? The Stroop Effect shows that something is going on in our brain. But what does it tell us about our brain’s ability to process colors, words, and illusions? Is it something that happened during development or is there something that happens in our brain when we look at illusions?
The Stroop Effect is named after John R. Stroop, who discovered this phenomenon in 1935. The Stroop Effect states that some thinking processes interfere with other thinking processes. Some of these processes involve attention, perception, reading, and naming (“What Conflicting Mental Tasks Reveal About Thinking: The Stroop Effect”). Two theories may explain the Stroop Effect: the speed of processing theory and the selective attention theory. The speed of processing theory is when interference occurs and words are read faster than colors are named. The selective attention theory is when interference occurs and naming colors needs more attention …show more content…
To make sense of an image, our brain must take clues from the image and interpret them (Winston 36). For example if something appears to be farther away we see it as smaller (37). Although some illusions look real or moving, they can appear real but never really exist. We can even stare at the image and it could start to move (Hanson and Mann 5). There are two different types of illusions physiological and cognitive (6). Afterimage is a visual sensation that appears after looking at one image for a long time (30). Physiological illusions occur when the brain is overstimulated and the eyes make shapes and colors that are not even in the image. The two examples of physiological illusions are the Herman grid and afterimages (6). Cognitive illusions are when the brain assumes things about an image that is not true. There are four examples of cognitive illusions ambiguous, paradox, distorting, and fiction