Stroop Effect: Color Wording and Cognitive Interference

The ability for adaptive behavior and the conditions that affect it has been a central area of research for psychologists since its inception. When behaviors are learned they become automatic processes. Automatic processes can be described as behavior that is not particularly motivated by the avoidance of error because a person no longer has to consciously think about the next piece of desired information. Automatic processes occur with less effort and error, whereas controlled processes need to occur with a person’s full attention. Controlled processes require conscious decisions to perform tasks and can be error-prone. Tasks such as walking, writing, and reading are examples of automatic processes that do not recognize an error until after it has occurred. Errors can occur by factors that can cause interference of cognitive processes. The ability to distinguish color is an example of controlled process that is a part of the Stroop Effect. The Stroop Effect was an experiment developed by John Ridley Stroop to demonstrate that interference in cognitive processes can be created. He did this by applying mismatched colors to words for colors (i.e. the word green was written in red) and having people name the color, a controlled task, while reading, an automatic task; it has become the standard for studying the process of drawing meanings from words. Over-learned automatic processes sometimes interfere with conscious processes. Automatic processes are beneficial for fast and effortless processing of cognitive thought but can be negative if the processes become hard to stop when the conditions are appropriate. Therefore, when a controlled process is in direct competition with an automatic process in certain tasks, the automatic proces...

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...trings, letter strings and color assignment in correspondence with the letter strings and its positioning.

Results

As predicted, there was main effect of list type, F(2, 42) = 8.63, p = .001 on the amount of time recorded in seconds and accurate to the nearest hundredth of a millisecond. The pseudo (M = 14.66, SD = 3.72), neutral (M = 14.88, SD = 3.7), and color list type (M = 18.21, SD = 4.65) were reliable as seen in Figure 1. Post-hoc t-test was analyzed and resulted in significance in neutral words t(21) = -3.04, p < .001 and color words t(21) = 4.06, p < .001.

References

MacLeod, M. C. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review.

Psychological Bulletin, 109, 163-203.

Redding, G & Gerjets, D. (1977). Stroop effect: Interference and facilitation with verbal and manual responses. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 45, 11-17.