The Stroop Effect Comparing Color Word Labels and Color Patch Labels

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The Stroop Effect Comparing Color Word Labels and Color Patch Labels

Abstract

The current study examined four components of the Stroop effect using

a manual word response and a manual color response. The major focus

being the three semantic components – semantic relatedness, semantic

relevance and response set membership, that contributes to the Stroop

interference. The results indicated that there was a response set

membership effect in both the manual word response and manual color

response, suggesting that interference occurs in the lexicon system

when a manual word response is used and interference was located at a

late selection stage, for manual color response. Glaser & Glaser

(1989) have suggested interference in the lexical system when a vocal

response is required, but no interference using a manual response,

and that manual responses output via the semantic system. Sugg &

McDonald (1994) suggested from their findings that when a manual word

response is used it is output via the lexical system, and when a

manual color response is required it is output through the semantic

system. Sharma & McKenna tested these theories and found interference

in the manual word response, but not in manual color response,

therefore suggesting that lexical, semantic relatedness, and semantic

relevance effects are located in the lexical system and response set

membership effect was located in at a response selection stage.

The Stroop effect comparing color word labels and color patch labels.

The classical Stroop effect (Stroop, 1935) which has been extensively

investigated since its publication in 1935, entailed the participant

to name the ink color in which a word or letter string were written.

Interference in naming the ink color becomes evident when the word is

a word associated with color, ex. red written in blue ink. This Stroop

phenomenon has proven to be robust against more than 700 Stroop

related articles (see MacLeod, 1991 for a full review). The

traditional Stroop effect used verbal responses with five colors, red,

green, blue, purple and brown. Stroop (1935) conducted 2 experiments,

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