PSYC 101 stroop

16 Seconds to Complete Practice Trial 1

13 Seconds to Complete Stroop Trial 1

36 Seconds to Complete Practice Trial 2

36 Seconds to Complete Stroop Trial 2

Briefly (2-3 sentences) summarize the pattern in your results. Did you follow the expected pattern? If not, why do you think that is so?

The first trial was a breeze, it was easy for my brain to process the word because the word matched the color. The second trial was far more difficult, I consistently caught myself trying to read the word before being able to identify the color. My brain naturally identified the word far quicker than the color.

Briefly (2-3 sentences) define, in your own words, the Stroop Effect:

John Ridley Stroop was the first to identify the Stroop Effect in 1935, which is the outcome of our mental flexibility and vitality. The Stroop Effect is related to the ability of a majority of people to read words quicker than they can name specific colors. During the Stroop Effect the cognitive mechanism process that is working is called the Directed Attention. Directed Attention is a critical mental resource that allows us to consciously manage how we focus our thoughts (Deyoung 2014). During this exercise personally had to remind myself to identify the color not the word during the second portion.

Directed Attention Fatigue occurs when our brain is placed under continual demand, resulting in our ability to direct the focus of our thoughts to tire. While conducting the exercise two brain processes (word recognition and color recognition) conflict, which cause sour brain to use selective attention (Deyoung, 2014).

Explain (3-4 sentences), in your own words the relevancy of the Stroop Effect to the understanding of sensation and perception. Provide one example in real life where the principles of the Stroop Effect may impact your processing speed/accuracy (3-4 sentences):

The Stroop Effect is relevant to understand sensation and perception because, it displays multiple variables that can change the process of perception. It literally changes how your sense (see) the information. Instead of identifying the color black by the word written in black, you are looking at the color black but, the word literally written is red. You have to attempt to ignore the word and just identify the color but, our word recognition is clearly stronger than our color recognition.

Imagine you are at the checkout counter and you're using your card to pay for your items. You swipe you card and are prompted to confirm your purchase with the words YES or NO. Typically, the YES is written in green and the NO is written in red. Since we were children we have been taught to associate green with good/go and red with stop/no. Well this time you are at a store with a fancy new machine that wants to practice the Stroop Effect. You see the word ‘YES’ written in red and the word ‘NO’ written in green. I have seen this multiple times (typically in Target) and it takes me a second to process the information, just like it took me a long time to identify the colors during the second part of this exercise. This one example of how the Stroop Effect may impact your processing speed/accuracy.

References

De Young, R. (2014). Using the Stroop Effect to test our capacity to direct attention: A tool for navigating Urgent transitions. Retrieved from Http://www.srne.umich.edu/eplab/demos/st0/stroopdesc/htm