Cognitive psychology is the study of the way in which the mind processes information. It concerns the way we take in information from the outside world, how we make sense of that information and what use we make of it. The Stroop Effect is one of the earliest and most famous experiments into cognitive processes. It was published by John Ridley Stroop in 1935 and is a phenomena involved in attentional processes. It demonstrates the effects of interference, processing speed (reaction time) and automatically in divided attention. Stroop created two experiments with the aim to investigate whether visual interference affects the cognitive processing speed in naming incongruently colored words. The experiments portray a psychological test of our …show more content…
When the participants came into the room, they were informed about the purpose of the experiment and they were asked to sign consent forms. After, the instructions were read to them and when the experiment was over, debriefing was done and their questions about the experiment were answered. No participants were harmed in any way and they were told that they had the right to withdraw at any time. They were also told that their identities wouldn’t be …show more content…
Discussion The aim of this experiment was to investigate the effect of congruent and incongruent word lists on the time it took participants to name the color of the inks correctly. The findings showed that participants had the best performance in the second condition, where they were asked to name the colors in the congruent word list. On the other hand, the group that had the worst performance was the third condition where they named the colors in the incongruent word list. The first condition’s performance (control) was in the middle. The results showed that it is easier for people to read words correctly regardless of their color but more difficult to name the color when an incongruent word list is given. These results support Stroop’s 1935 experiment as well as the aim and therefore it can be said that the experiment has high face and construct validity. Also, the experiment is ethical as the participants weren’t harmed in any way and signed consent forms before the experiment was conducted. A limitation of this experiment is that it has low ecological validity as only 12th grade students from Enka Schools were used as participants. All of the students in the school are Turkish and their mother tongue is not English. If the experiment was done in another country, or with participants that had English as their native language, the results could’ve been
... understand the motives behind dehumanization and possible cause of dehumanization, and clearly the benefits of this research outweighed, if any, harm done to the participants. There was no real deception involved in this experiment. The participants were given informed consent. The instructions were clear, though they did not know what the experimenters were looking for; nonetheless I did not observe any true deception involved in this experiment. The participants were all debriefed at the end of the experiments, and seeing this, the experiments were clearly all ethical.
Although correlation does not equal causation, we can conclude that similar cognitive processes, such as interference and automaticity, have influenced the results in our experiment. This can be expressed by the data and in identifying and saying aloud/reading a simple number compared to quantifying simple numbers. The cognitive load of reading familiar or smaller words is lower than that of counting, thus creating perchance a longer reaction time. In the experiment conducted in class as well as the one conducted by Stroop, the issue of divided attention may have been a great factor in interference or prolonged reaction time in the conditions. Psychological refractory period which states that the response to a second stimulus is slowed down by the first stimulus being processed; this can be a cause for the finding of increased reaction time when conflicting information is given. Attention may unconsciously be given to the less complex task, which is reading/identifying, and counting the main and more complex task may be interfered by the simpler stimulus. The expectation of having a longer reaction time when conducting the incongruent task was referenced back to the Stroop effect due to the similar implications of identifying and saying aloud the color presented in the print of the color descriptive word (Stroop,
Through practice and maturation, reading progresses from a controlled process to one that is automatic, lessening the demands on attentional resources. Stroop reported one of the first studies, which provided support for this, in 1935. He combined the word object/property dimensions in the same stimulus to create one of the most researched phenomena in cognitive psychology: The Stroop effect (MacLeod, 1991). He found that it was faster to read words than it was to name the corresponding object or their properties, including their color.
Harvey et al (2000) also used the word list learning and delayed recall, pranix drawing, modified Boston Naming test and CERAD to assess cognitive function of both their control and experimental populations. The word list learning and delayed recall is a ten item list of words that is presented to the subject during three separate trials. After each trial the subject is asked to freely recall the words from the list. After a delay, which is filled with the pranix drawing task, the participants are asked to recall the list of words once again. The dependent variable in this task is the number of words recalled over the three trials and the number of words that were recalled after the delay. The scores ranged from 0 to 20 based the...
...ffect. This theory suggests that recognizing and naming colors is not an “automatic process”. The attention need to be shifted from word to recognition of color; and there is hesitancy to respond; whereas, reading a word is habitual. The brain automatically understands the meaning and the phonetics of the word. The habituation of the reading task does not require controlled attention. Hence it is easier to read a word than to recognize the color of the word. More than theorizing on the phenomenon of Stroop effect, there is application value to this study. The experimental data and observations in the current study are very vital that it can be applied in many situations where the correctness is important than the speed. This information has the widest application in selection of individuals in occupations requiring instance data processing and correct responses.
On the other hand, due to the fact that this experiment is controlled and partakes in a laboratory, where the situations are changed to expose different behaviours of the children participants, this can reduce the ecological validity within the study. Ecological va...
All participants should be able to discuss the procedure and the findings with the psychologist. If they had been deceived they must be told and explained why, as well as being told about their role in the experiment. Any questions must be answered honestly and as fully as possible.
...colours are read at a slower rate when they do not match with words with a different colour. Also, they stated what causes the actual interference is when two responses are competing for responses that should be produced. All in all, this can affect the reading reaction time. In some cases the reaction time can be as perfect. That is when it only has congruent word, and sometimes it may not be so perfect because of interference. This can be caused by incongruent words.
Experiment one was a word-search task extending past research by Marsh and Bower (1993). It aimed to test two different concepts. Firstly, to test how rela...
For this research requirement I chose three different experiments to examine thoroughly. The first of these experiments came from the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. The study done in this journal was an examination of orthographic learning and self-teaching in a bilingual and biliterate context. The aim of the study was to figure out the advantages and/or disadvantages of a student learning a native language when they are either monolingual, bilingual, or biliterate, and the study was focused on learning English because this is the most commonly learned non-native language in the world.
Ulric Neisser in 1964 created his study of Visual Search for the purposes of developing cognitive psychology. The aim of his experiment was to see whether round or angular letters affected one’s ability to locate a letter “Z” (Neisser, 1964). His method was to first ask a person to scan a list (consisting of fifty items) to find a specific target. The list was computer generated, each list either a set of round letters or angular letters with the letter “Z” randomly mixed in. The subject peered through a window onto a box with the list inside. Then he illuminated the list and started the timer. After the subject scanned the list and found the target, he turned the timer off. The results were that it took the subjects less time to find the letter “Z” in the set of round letters instead of the angular letters. He did not specify the age of his participants or the time of day that each subject took the test.
Although there was some criticisms about the above experiment, Craik and Tulving performed more experiments each time refining the D.O.P. model. There were thoughts that the structural tasks were easier and not as much time had to be spent on them therefore people did not have as long to look at those words and could not study them like the other tasks. Craik and Tulving then made the structural task take equally as long as the other tasks. The results remand the same as the previous experiments. Craik and Tulving also originally started with five tasks, but then narrowed it down to three to avoid a ceiling effect. The self-referent task was later added to model by Rogers.
Cunillera, Toni, Càmara, Estela, Laine, Matti, & Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni. (2010). Words as anchors: Known words facilitate statistical learning. Experimental Psychology, 57(2), 134-141. doi:10.1027/1618-3169/a000017
The title of the article gave a fair representation of the topic as it was clear and concise in the wording. The title encompassed the idea that alphabet letter instruction on young children’s word recognition would be explored through experiments and analysis. Reading on through the article it was evident that the effects of alphabet letter instruction on you children’s word recognition were addressed.
McClelland, J. L., & Rumelhart, D. E. (1981). An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: I. An account of basic findings. Psychological review, 88(5), 375.