If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

Stroop Effect

Page history last edited by Rebecca Clanton 10 years, 5 months ago

THE STROOP EFFECT

J. Ridley Stroop

Named after J. Ridley Stroop, the Stroop Effect deals with issues surrounding selective attention. When presented with a word that is printed in its own color (ORANGE, BLUE, RED, etc), people have no issue naming the color of the words. However, when the color of the word does not match the meaning of the word (see figure), people take a longer time to name the color. In Stroop Effect experiments, the meaning of the word distracts the participant from being able to name the color of the printed word. J. Ridley Stroop called this "interference."

Since the publishing of Stroop's experiment, many researchers have done additional studies to try to explain the effect. Some researchers believe that this phenomenon can be explained by parallel distributed processing (PDP). In this approach, two different pathways are activated during the Stroop Effect task and this activation of both pathways causes interference. Another approach to explain this effect is the speed of processing model. This model suggests that interference occurs because adults read more often than they name colors. Processing and naming colors requires a longer reaction time than processing and reading words. Therefore, when trying to name colors, reading the words interferes with the task.