The Stroop Effect is a commonly researched phenomenon involving the concept of direct attention and dealing with the notion that opposing information has an effect on an individual’s reaction time. The Stroop effect gained notoriety after American psychologist, John Ridley Stroop, published his paper on the effect in 1935. Since J. R. Stroop’s publication, countless researchers have continued to administer Stroop tests in an attempt to continue to develop upon this concept. There are a variety of variations of Stroop tasks involving color, numbers, or even emotions have been tested and published. The participant in a Stroop experiment is expected to dissociate the meaning of the word, number, or color written and, as quickly as they can,
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Throughout previous research, various concepts have been considered and their responsibility in producing faster or slower processing times. The concept of interference was a major topic discussed by J. R. Stroop (1935). Unlike this experiment utilizing lists concerning numbers, Stroop used a color test where the written word was of a color different from the ink color with which it was written. Similar to our experiment, Stroop used a neutral color list where all colors were printed in black ink and an incongruent number list (similar to the incongruent counting list of this experiment) where the list of colors written were printed in a different color other than the color they spelled out. Stroop found the greatest difference, 73.4% difference, to be between the neutral color list and the incongruent color list he used. These findings were similar to the findings of this experiment illustrating the concept of interference is at work when a subject is faced with reading an incongruent list. The slower reaction time is a result of the impediment the brain experiences as it tries to process conflicting information. This impediment is one of the main causes identified in slowing down subjects’ reaction time or in the case of this experiment, reading …show more content…
Facilitation usually accompanies automaticity and is another explanation for why reaction to the neutral stimuli will always be faster than the reaction to the color or numerical stimuli. The concept of automaticity and facilitation, a normal human reversion when processing during traditional reading, and their application or lack there of in reading featuring an incongruence, has also been addressed in previous research. Dormal and Pesenti (2007) explore automaticity as it applies to processing length, numerosity, and duration. It was determined that automaticity is a significant factor, but instead of being explicitly either present or absent, the role of automaticity is variable and the degree to which it is applied is dependent on the condition (Dormal & Pesenti, 2007). Automaticity and facilitation are certainly applied with respect to the neutral naming list, which is read the fastest and has the lowest reading time of any of the lists read. Dormal and Pesenti’s thought of automaticity being applied in varying degrees can also be illustrated by the increase in reading times from the neutral naming list when moved on to the two control lists, the congruent counting list and the neutral counting list. These lists took longer to read than the neutral naming list, but the difference between the
Throughout previous research, various concepts have been considered and their responsibility in producing faster or slower processing times. The concept of interference was a major topic discussed by J. R. Stroop (1935). Unlike this experiment utilizing lists concerning numbers, Stroop used a color test where the written word was of a color different from the ink color with which it was written. Similar to our experiment, Stroop used a neutral color list where all colors were printed in black ink and an incongruent number list (similar to the incongruent counting list of this experiment) where the list of colors written were printed in a different color other than the color they spelled out. Stroop found the greatest difference, 73.4% difference, to be between the neutral color list and the incongruent color list he used. These findings were similar to the findings of this experiment illustrating the concept of interference is at work when a subject is faced with reading an incongruent list. The slower reaction time is a result of the impediment the brain experiences as it tries to process conflicting information. This impediment is one of the main causes identified in slowing down subjects’ reaction time or in the case of this experiment, reading …show more content…
Facilitation usually accompanies automaticity and is another explanation for why reaction to the neutral stimuli will always be faster than the reaction to the color or numerical stimuli. The concept of automaticity and facilitation, a normal human reversion when processing during traditional reading, and their application or lack there of in reading featuring an incongruence, has also been addressed in previous research. Dormal and Pesenti (2007) explore automaticity as it applies to processing length, numerosity, and duration. It was determined that automaticity is a significant factor, but instead of being explicitly either present or absent, the role of automaticity is variable and the degree to which it is applied is dependent on the condition (Dormal & Pesenti, 2007). Automaticity and facilitation are certainly applied with respect to the neutral naming list, which is read the fastest and has the lowest reading time of any of the lists read. Dormal and Pesenti’s thought of automaticity being applied in varying degrees can also be illustrated by the increase in reading times from the neutral naming list when moved on to the two control lists, the congruent counting list and the neutral counting list. These lists took longer to read than the neutral naming list, but the difference between the