The Stroop Test

Superior Essays
This paper explains the effects of the famous Stroop Test, what it means, and why it stumps so many minds. The Stroop Test brings into the field many questions about how the brain works, like whether humans can identify words faster than colors or vice versa. The fascination people have with this test is not because it is easy and fun, but because it is confusing and tricky. A simple task of identifying the color of a word when the color does not match the word seems like a piece of cake especially to well educated people, but it proves to be the contrary. Over the years, the Stroop Test has been administered countless times, mostly on psychology tests. In this experiment, the Stroop Test is used through LabView to gather data through and support …show more content…
He came up with the color test in order to show that there is interference between reading and naming. This interference or conflict that causes a delay in the brain when a word does not match its color is called the “Stroop Effect.”1 In this effect, when the brain reads, it automatically decides what the word means. For example, when people see the word “RED”, they think of associations/connections to the color like a red strawberry or a rose. These connections are so strong, people do not have to stop and think about what a word means because they innately know. So, when the brain is faced with naming a word “RED” when it is blue, it has to stop itself from blurting out the color red. This theory claims that brains are very dependent and extremely great at language. Are people really better at identifying words than identifying colors?
1. Experiment
In order to execute an experiment, LabView is used. There are strings for ten different colors which include these: Maroon, Yellow, Green, Blue, White, Orange, Pink, Purple, Black, Grey. Each of these colors is compared to a control where participants choose an answer. If the submission is equal to the correct answer, then a small green light lights up after the test is over, indicating that the answer is right. The one or zero indicated by each boolean light is submitted to a Format into String with the time elapsed in order
…show more content…
This supports the theory that people seem to identify words faster than colors. But, why are people so in tune with language? It is weird that we can identify symbols with various combinations faster than one solid color. This seems very surprising at first, but with a little thought it makes sense. People seem to rely more on words than they do their eyes. There are many experiments that show that people do often forget details in their memories like the color of clothes, and often replace those details with the way someone else desribes it. This happened in an episode of brain games. A red car crashed against a stationary car on purpose and accelerated away while a group of spectators who were around stared and gasped. They were separated into two groups and questioned about the event. The interrogator asked both groups the same questions but with different descriptive words added. One group was asked about how fast was the car moving when it smashed into the stationary one. Most of them say about thirty to about forty miles an hour. The other group was asked how fast was the car moving when it bumped into the other car and the responses were fifteen to twenty miles per hour. This shows that memories can be altered just by the use of words. Words are more special to the brain than images. Maybe one reason could be that brains do not want to overload

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