- Sign into My Research
- Create My Research Account
- Company Website
- Our Products
- About Dissertations
- Español (España)
- Support Center
Select language
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Português (Brasil)
- Português (Portugal)
Welcome to My Research!
You may have access to the free features available through My Research. You can save searches, save documents, create alerts and more. Please log in through your library or institution to check if you have access.
Translate this article into 20 different languages!
If you log in through your library or institution you might have access to this article in multiple languages.
Get access to 20+ different citations styles
Styles include MLA, APA, Chicago and many more. This feature may be available for free if you log in through your library or institution.
Looking for a PDF of this document?
You may have access to it for free by logging in through your library or institution.
Want to save this document?
You may have access to different export options including Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive and citation management tools like RefWorks and EasyBib. Try logging in through your library or institution to get access to these tools.
- More like this
- Preview Available
- Scholarly Journal
Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions
No items selected.
Please select one or more items.
Select results items first to use the cite, email, save, and export options
This is a limited preview of the full PDF
Try and log in through your library or institution to see if they have access.
It appears you don't have support to open PDFs in this web browser. To view this file, Open with your PDF reader
Suggested sources
- About ProQuest
- Terms of Use
- Privacy Policy
- Cookie Policy
- Advanced Search
- All new items
- Journal articles
- Manuscripts
- All Categories
- Metaphysics and Epistemology
- Epistemology
- Metaphilosophy
- Metaphysics
- Philosophy of Action
- Philosophy of Language
- Philosophy of Mind
- Philosophy of Religion
- Value Theory
- Applied Ethics
- Meta-Ethics
- Normative Ethics
- Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality
- Philosophy of Law
- Social and Political Philosophy
- Value Theory, Miscellaneous
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Logic and Philosophy of Logic
- Philosophy of Biology
- Philosophy of Cognitive Science
- Philosophy of Computing and Information
- Philosophy of Mathematics
- Philosophy of Physical Science
- Philosophy of Social Science
- Philosophy of Probability
- General Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Science, Misc
- History of Western Philosophy
- Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
- Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
- 17th/18th Century Philosophy
- 19th Century Philosophy
- 20th Century Philosophy
- History of Western Philosophy, Misc
- Philosophical Traditions
- African/Africana Philosophy
- Asian Philosophy
- Continental Philosophy
- European Philosophy
- Philosophy of the Americas
- Philosophical Traditions, Miscellaneous
- Philosophy, Misc
- Philosophy, Introductions and Anthologies
- Philosophy, General Works
- Teaching Philosophy
- Philosophy, Miscellaneous
- Other Academic Areas
- Natural Sciences
- Social Sciences
- Cognitive Sciences
- Formal Sciences
- Arts and Humanities
- Professional Areas
- Other Academic Areas, Misc
- Submit a book or article
- Upload a bibliography
- Personal page tracking
- Archives we track
- Information for publishers
- Introduction
- Submitting to PhilPapers
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Subscriptions
- Editor's Guide
- The Categorization Project
- For Publishers
- For Archive Admins
- PhilPapers Surveys
- Bargain Finder
- About PhilPapers
- Create an account
Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions
Reprint years, other versions.
No versions found
PhilArchive
External links.
- From the Publisher via CrossRef (no proxy)
Through your library
- Sign in / register and customize your OpenURL resolver
- Configure custom resolver
Similar books and articles
Citations of this work, references found in this work.
No references found.
| WebExp Demo Paradigm: |
Description
- There is no interference from incongruent colours when reading the words aloud (compared to reading words in black)
- There is significant interference from incongruent words when naming colours (compared to naming colour patches)
- Stroop, J. R. 1935. Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology 18: 643-662.
- MacLeod, Colin M. 1991. Half a Century of Research on the Stroop Effect: An Integrative Review. Psychological Bulletin 109: 163-203.
The Experiment
An official website of the United States government
The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.
The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
- Publications
- Account settings
Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .
- Advanced Search
- Journal List
- Sage Choice
- PMC10798018
The Stroop effect and mental imagery
The classic Stroop task is very simple: you have to name the color of words printed on a page. If these words are color words (like “red” or “blue”), where the color named and the color it is printed in are different (say, “red” printed in blue), the reaction time increases significantly. My aim is to argue that the existing psychological explanations of the Stroop effect need to be supplemented. The Stroop effect is not exclusively about access to motor control. It is also, to a large extent, about interferences in perceptual processing. To put it briefly, reading the color word triggers—laterally and automatically—visual imagery of the color and this interferes with the processing of the perceived color of the word. In other words, the Stroop effect is to a large extent a sensory phenomenon, and it has less to do with attention, conflict monitoring, or other higher-level phenomena.
Introduction
One of the most widely researched psychological phenomena of all times is the Stroop effect (see Stroop, 1935 ). The classic Stroop task is very simple: you have to name the color of words printed on a page. If these words are color words (like “red” or “blue”), where the color named and the color it is printed in are different (say, “red” printed in blue), the reaction time increases significantly.
What explains this odd difference? There are two major explanations, the first one dominant in the second half of the 20th century, the second dominant in the last 20 years. According the first one, the Stroop effect is about attention capture. The linguistic stimulus captures our attention, and as a consequence, less attention remains for the processing of the color stimulus (see MacLeod, 1991 for a summary). According to the second one, the Stroop effect is about conflict monitoring and control: there are control mechanisms that detect the conflict between the linguistic and the color stimulus and they prioritize the processing of the language stimulus ( Botvinick et al., 2001 ). 1
The attention account and the conflict monitoring account of the Stroop effect are very different inasmuch as the former gives a fully bottom-up explanation, whereas the latter a top-down one of the effect the semantic meaning of the word has on the processing of color. But they share an important premise, namely, that the Stroop effect is about access to motor control. Depending on whether the word “red” is printed in red or blue, our access to the motor control (of reading the word) is different and this explains the difference in our reaction time. This is clear enough in the attention account, but it is also what is behind the conflict monitoring account, where “conflict may be operationally defined as the simultaneous activation of incompatible representations […] e.gg., representations of alternative responses” ( Botvinick et al., 2001 , p. 630).
My aim in this paper is to argue that the Stroop effect is not exclusively about access to motor control. It is also, to a large extent, about interferences in perceptual processing. To put it briefly, reading the color word triggers—laterally and automatically—visual imagery of the color and this interferes with the processing of the perceived color of the word.
In section “Mental Imagery”, I outline the concept of mental imagery that is relevant in this discussion and in section “Language Processing and Mental Imagery”, I provide empirical evidence for the various ways in which language processing and mental imagery interact. In section “Back to the Stroop Effect”, I argue that these interactions provide a clear case for a very early perceptual interference from language processing to perceptual processing that explains some aspects of the Stroop effect in a much more straightforward manner than either the attention account or the conflict monitoring account could.
Mental Imagery
The term “mental imagery” was first consistently used in the early days of experimental psychology in the second half of the 19th century and while it has clearly made it to our ordinary language, the way psychologists and neuroscientists use the concept is not as an ordinary language category. Here is a representative definition from a review article on mental imagery in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences : “We use the term ‘mental imagery’ to refer to representations […] of sensory information without a direct external stimulus” ( Pearson et al., 2015 , p. 590; see also Nanay, 2015 , 2018 ).
This definition captures the pre-theoretical notion of mental imagery, which we tend to have in mind when, for example, thinking about the experience of closing our eyes and visualizing an apple. That experience is a representation of sensory information without direct external stimulus. But the concept of mental imagery has a much wider scope than just the experience of visualizing.
First, mental imagery, like perception, can happen in all sense modalities. Mental imagery can be visual, but it can also be auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile. Second, while visualizing an apple amounts to a voluntary use of mental imagery, there is also involuntary mental imagery, like flashbacks or earworms—annoying tunes that go through our head in spite of the fact that we really don’t want them to. Third, while in the case of visualizing, mental imagery is not accompanied by the feeling of presence—you’re not actually taking the apple to be in front of you—, some other forms of mental imagery may be accompanied by the feeling of presence, for example, in the case of lucid dreaming and in some forms of hallucinations (which are widely taken to be forms of mental imagery in psychiatry).
The definition I have been using is a negative definition. It defines mental imagery as (to rephrase a bit) sensory representation not triggered directly by sensory input. But it leaves open the question about what this sensory representation is triggered by (directly). In some cases, it is triggered by top-down processes, as in the case of closing your eyes and visualizing an apple. But in other cases, it is triggered laterally, by, for example, input in another sense modality. When you watch the TV muted, for example, your auditory representation (and often your salient auditory experience) is not directly triggered by the auditory input—there is no auditory input as the TV is muted. It is directly triggered by the visual input of the images on TV ( Calvert et al., 1997 ; Hertrich et al., 2011 ; Nanay, 2018 ; Pekkola et al., 2005 ; Spence & Deroy, 2013 ).
It should be clear that while the definition of mental imagery I have been using does seem to capture the ordinary usage of the term, it also carves up mental phenomena somewhat differently. As we have seen, it allows for involuntary imagery. But it also allows for unconscious mental imagery as nothing in the definition says that the perceptual representation that is not triggered directly by sensory input must be a conscious representation.
We have an overwhelming amount of evidence that perception may be conscious or unconscious (e.g., Kouider & Dehaene, 2007 ). But if perceptual representations that are directly triggered by sensory input (i.e., perception) may be unconscious, then it would be arbitrary to posit that perceptual representations that are not directly triggered by sensory input (i.e., mental imagery) may not be. Further, some people report having no conscious mental imagery—these people are called aphantasics and in the last two decades or so a lot of experimental studies were conducted to find out about the causes and nature of aphantasia (see, e.g., Zeman et al., 2007 ). And while aphantasia seems to be a non-monolithic phenomenon, where many different things can lead to the lack of conscious mental imagery, there is clear evidence that at least a subset of aphantasics, while reporting to have no conscious mental imagery at all, do have mental imagery in the sense of perceptual representation that is not directly triggered by sensory input. They have unconscious mental imagery ( Nanay, 2021 ).
In short, mental imagery may be voluntary or involuntary and it may be conscious or unconscious. It is a scientifically respectable (and even publicly observable) category that is well suited to play a role in the explanation of psychological phenomena.
Language Processing and Mental Imagery
We now know that language processing is not completely detachable from mental imagery. Both generating linguistic utterances and hearing/reading them utilizes mental imagery. Some of the empirical findings supporting these claims come from neuroimaging. Describing a scene relies on our ability to generate mental imagery—early cortical representations not directly triggered by sensory input ( Mar, 2004 ; Zadbood et al., 2017 ). Even more importantly, hearing a description invariably triggers mental imagery—again, not necessarily conscious mental imagery, but early cortical representations not directly triggered by sensory input and it is this imagistic representation that is remembered, not the words we heard ( Zwaan, 2016 ; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998 ).
We understand a fair amount of how this happens and, crucially, we know a lot about the ways in which linguistic labels change (and speed up) perceptual processes and we also know a fair amount about the time scale of this influence. The most important piece of finding both from EEG and from eye tracking studies is that linguistic labels influence shape recognition in less than 100 ms ( Boutonnet & Lupyan, 2015 ; de Groot et al., 2016 ; Noorman et al., 2018 —it should be acknowledged that in these experiments, the onset of the linguistic label preceded the onset of the shape to be recognized). This is a very similar time-frame as how long it takes for the stimulus to reach V4 ( Zamarashkina et al., 2020 )—that is, extremely fast (note that word recognition does take significantly longer, see Hauk et al., 2012 ).
Crucially, this less than 100 ms it takes for linguistic labels to influence shape recognition is much shorter than the time that would be needed for perceptual processing to reach all the way up to higher level representations and then trickle all the way down again to the primary visual cortex (see Lamme & Roelfsema, 2000 ; Thorpe et al., 1996 for the temporal unfolding of visual processing in unimodal cases and see Kringelbach et al., 2015 for a summary of the relative slowness of non-early cortical processing).
By means of comparison, amodal completion (the visual representation of occluded parts of perceived objects) is taken to be bottom-up or laterally influenced on the basis of timing studies although it happens slightly slower than 100 ms. Amodal completion in the early cortices happens within 100–200 ms of retinal stimulation ( Rauschenberger et al., 2001 ; Sekuler & Palmer, 1992 —this is true even of complex visual stimuli, like faces, see Chen et al., 2009 ; see also Lerner et al., 2004 ; Rauschenberger et al. 2006 ; Yun et al., 2018 for detailed studies that track the (very quick) temporal unfolding of amodal completion in different parts of the visual cortex). If the 100–200 ms of amodal completion is explained in terms of lateral influence, then the less than 100 ms of the influence of linguistic labeling can also be explained in terms of lateral influence.
This means that linguistic processing and mental imagery interact at an extremely early stage of perceptual processing—by any account in early cortical processing.
Back to the Stroop Effect
My aim is to argue that in the light of these results about the relation between language processing and mental imagery, we have good reasons to hold that reading the color word triggers—laterally and automatically—visual imagery of the color and this interferes with the processing of the perceived color of the word and this is what explains the Stroop effect. In other words, the conflict between the color and the meaning of the word starts much earlier than motor control.
Here is an experiment that supports this hypothesis directly (there may be some indirect support from findings about the Stroop effect for color-related words as well (like “sky” [for blue] and “fire” [for red]—see Dairymple-Alford, 1972 ). A recent experiment shows that even if we control for all the attentional and other mechanisms that determine motor control, the activation patterns in V4—the part of the visual cortex that is responsible for color processing—would be difficult to explain unless we posit early sensory involvement in the Stroop effect ( Purmann & Pollmann, 2015 ).
Given that V4 is devoted (mainly) to color processing, it is active throughout any color Stroop task. More generally, the involvement of V4 in the Stroop task is somewhat difficult to examine experimentally given that without the functioning of these regions, the effect goes away. So some tricks are required to gain any insight about exactly how early cortical color processing is involved in the Stroop task. The experiments in Purmann & Pollmann, 2015 examined the ways in which the previous trial in a series of Stroop tasks influences the current trial. So the question they raised is how your early sensory cortices behave depending on the order of these trials. If you read the word “red” printed in blue, there is a conflict—it is an “incongruent trial.” If you read the word “blue” printed in blue, there is no conflict—it is referred to as a “congruent trial.”
The question is whether early sensory processing is different depending on whether an incongruent trial was preceded by another incongruent trial. And what the results show is that activities in V4 are very different depending on whether the previous trial was congruent or incongruent. Interestingly, the same effect was not observed in language processing regions of the brain, only in V4. If we take the Stroop task to be about motor control, these results make little sense. But if, as I am suggesting, it is at least partly about sensory processing, these results are exactly what we should expect.
The color of the word activates V4 bottom up (that's perception). And the reading of the word activates V4 laterally and automatically (that's mental imagery). And the processing of the perceived color is slowed down because of the interference of the mental imagery. In short, the conflict between the color and the meaning of the word starts already in perceptual processing.
A word of caution about the scope of the claim I argued for in this paper. While the main findings of the Stroop effect can be explained in terms of the lateral and automatic activation of mental imagery, I don’t want to pretend that all aspects of the Stroop effect can be explained with the help of this explanatory scheme. For example, we know that subjects show greater interference on the first few trials in each block of testing than on subsequent trials in the series ( Henik et al., 1997 ). Also, there is less interference on incongruent trials if they are frequent in comparison with congruent trials ( Lindsey & Jacoby, 1994 ). I don’t think the appeal to the laterally and automatically triggered mental imagery will help us explain these findings.
Nonetheless, we can conclude that the Stroop effect is, at least partially, a sensory phenomenon, and it has less to do with attention, conflict monitoring, or other higher-level phenomena than previously supposed. While it may give us insights into the nature of attention and automaticity or into the intricacies of conflict monitoring and cognitive control, its theoretical import may be even more significant. In fact, the way language processing and perceptual processing interact in the case of the Stroop effect can open up new research directions both about early cortical sensory processing and about language processing, besides touching on some of the deepest (and earliest) philosophical questions about the relation between perception and language.
1. The Stroop effect is an important phenomenon in its own right, but it has also been used in many branches and paradigms of psychological research in order to determine the automaticity of our various psychological responses. Just one example: it is widely held that a necessary feature of synesthetic experiences is that they show the Stroop effect. When deciding whether more unusual forms of synesthesia (e.g., swimming-style synesthesia, where different styles of swimming—backstroke, breaststroke, etc.—bring about synesthetic color experiences, see Nikolić et al., 2011 ; Rothen et al., 2013 ) really counts as genuine synesthesia, the hallmark is to show that they show the Stroop effect.
Author Contribution(s): Bence Nanay: Conceptualization; Formal analysis; Investigation; Project administration; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing.
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding: The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD: Bence Nanay https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2835-6530
Stroop Effect Experiment in Psychology
Charlotte Ruhl
Research Assistant & Psychology Graduate
BA (Hons) Psychology, Harvard University
Charlotte Ruhl, a psychology graduate from Harvard College, boasts over six years of research experience in clinical and social psychology. During her tenure at Harvard, she contributed to the Decision Science Lab, administering numerous studies in behavioral economics and social psychology.
Learn about our Editorial Process
Saul McLeod, PhD
Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
On This Page:
The Stroop effect is a psychological phenomenon demonstrating interference in reaction time of a task. It occurs when the name of a color is printed in a color not denoted by the name, making it difficult for participants to identify the color of the word quickly and accurately.
Take-home Messages
- In psychology, the Stroop effect is the delay in reaction time between automatic and controlled processing of information, in which the names of words interfere with the ability to name the color of ink used to print the words.
- The Stroop test requires individuals to view a list of words printed in a different color than the word’s meaning. Participants are tasked with naming the color of the word, not the word itself, as fast as they can.
- For example, when presented with the word “green” written in red ink, it is much easier to name the word that is spelled instead of the color ink in which the word is written.
- The interference, or the delay in response time, is measured by comparing results from the conflict condition (word and color mismatch) to a neutral condition (e.g., a block of color or a color word with matching ink). Subtracting the results from these two conditions helps to eliminate the influence of general motor responses.
- Reading, a more powerful automatic process, takes some precedence over color naming, which requires higher cognitive demands.
- Since psychologist John Ridley Stroop first developed this paradigm back in 1935, the Stroop task has since been modified to help understand additional brain mechanisms and expanded to aid in brain damage and psychopathology research.
What Is The Stroop Effect?
The Stroop effect refers to a delay in reaction times between congruent and incongruent stimuli (MacLeod, 1991).
Congruency, or agreement, occurs when a word’s meaning and font color are the same. For example, if the word “green” is printed in green.
Incongruent stimuli are just the opposite. That is the word’s meaning and the color in which it is written do not align. For example, the word “green” might be printed in red ink.
The Stroop task asks individuals to name the color of the word instead of reading the word itself.
The delay in reaction time reveals that it is much harder to name the color of a word when the word itself spells another color (the incongruent stimuli) than it is to name the color of the word when the word itself spells that same color (the congruent stimuli).
The First Stroop Experiment
The Stroop effect was first published in 1935 by American psychologist John Ridley Stroop, although discoveries of this phenomenon date back to the nineteenth century (Stroop, 1935).
Building off previous research, Stroop had two main aims in his groundbreaking paper:
- To examine how incongruency between the color of the word and the word’s content will impair the ability to name the color.
- To measure what effect practicing reacting to color stimuli in the presence of conflicting word stimuli would have upon the reaction times.
To empirically study these two major aims, Stroop ran three different experiments:
1) Experiment 1 :
Participants (70 college undergraduates) were tasked with reading the word aloud, irrespective of its color. In other words, participants must read aloud the word “green” even if written in a different color.
2) Experiment 2 :
The second experiment was the opposite of the first. Participants (100 college students) were first asked to name the color of individual squares (instead of the color of words) as a training mechanism for the subsequent task. Afterward, participants had to say the color of the word, regardless of its meaning – the opposite of the experiment 1 procedure.
3) Experiment 3 :
The third and final experiment integrated all of the previously mentioned tests with an undergraduate population of 32 participants.
The independent variable (IV) was the congruency of the font name and color.
- Congruent (word name and font color are the same)
- Incongruent (word name and font color are different)
The dependent variable (DV) was reaction time (ms) in reporting the letter color.
After running the three experiments, Stroop drew two main conclusions:
- The interference of conflicting word stimuli upon the time for naming colors caused an increase of 47.0 seconds or 74.3 percent of the normal time for naming colors printed in just squares.
- The interference of conflicting color stimuli upon the time for reading words caused an increase of only 2.3 seconds or 5.6 percent over the normal time for reading the same words printed in black.
These tests demonstrate a disparity in the speed of naming colors and reading the names of colors, which may be explained by a difference in training in the two activities.
The word stimulus has been associated with the specific response “to read,” while the color stimulus has been associated with various responses: “to admire,” “to name,” etc.
The observed results might reflect the fact that people have more experience consciously reading words than consciously labeling colors, illustrating a difference in the mechanisms that control these two processes.
How the Stroop Effect Works
Why does the Stroop effect occur? We can tell our brain to do lots of things – store memories, sleep, think, etc. – so why can’t we tell it to do something as easy as naming a color? Isn’t that something we learn to do at a very young age?
Researchers have analyzed this question and come up with multiple different theories that seek to explain the occurrence of the Stroop effect (Sahinoglu & Dogan, 2016).
Speed of processing theory:
The processing speed theory claims that people can read words much faster than they can name colors (i.e., word processing is much faster than color processing).
When we look at the incongruent stimuli (the word “green” printed in red, for example), our brain first reads the word, making it much more difficult to then have to name the color.
As a result, a delay occurs when trying to name the color because doing so is not our brain’s first instinct (McMahon, 2013).
Selective attention theory:
The theory of selective attention holds that recognizing colors, compared to reading words, requires more attention.
Because of this, the brain needs to use more attention when attempting to name a color, making this process take slightly longer (McMahon, 2013).
Automaticity:
A prevalent explanation for the Stroop effect is the automatic nature of reading. When we see a word, its meaning is almost instantly recognized. Thus, when presented with a conflicting color, there’s interference between the automatic reading process and the task of naming the ink color.
This theory argues that recognizing colors is not an automatic process , and thus there is a slight hesitancy when carrying out this action.
Automatic processing is processed in the mind that is relatively fast and requires few cognitive resources.
This type of information processing generally occurs outside of conscious awareness and is common when undertaking familiar and highly practiced tasks.
However, the brain is able to automatically understand the meaning of a word as a result of habitual reading (think back to Stroop’s initial study in 1935 – this theory explains why he wanted to test the effects of practice on the ability to name colors).
Word reading, being more automatic and faster than color naming, results in involuntary intrusions during the color-naming task. Conversely, reading isn’t affected by the conflicting print color.
Researchers in support of this theory posit that automatic reading does not need controlled attention but still uses enough of the brain’s attentional resources to reduce the amount left for color processing (Monahan, 2001).
In a way, this parallels the brain’s dueling modes of thinking – that of “System 1” and “System 2.” Whereas the former is more automatic and instinctive, the latter is slower and more controlled (Kahneman, 2011).
This is similar to the Stroop effect, in which we see a more automatic process trying to dominate over a more deliberative one. The interference occurs when we try to use System 2 to override System 1, thus producing that delay in reaction time.
Parallel distributed processing:
The fourth and final theory proposes that unique pathways are developed when the brain completes different tasks. Some of these pathways, such as reading words, are stronger than others, such as naming colors (Cohen et al., 1990).
Thus, interference is not an issue of processing speed, attention, or automaticity but rather a battle between the stronger and weaker neural pathways.
Additional Research
John Ridley Stroop helped lay the groundwork for future research in this field.
Numerous studies have tried to identify the specific brain regions responsible for this phenomenon, identifying two key regions: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLFPC).
Both MRI and fMRI scans show activity in the ACC and DLPFC while completing the Stroop test or related tasks (Milham et al., 2003).
The DLPFC assists with memory and executive functioning, and its role during the task are to activate color perception and inhibit word encoding. The ACC is responsible for selecting the appropriate response and properly allocating attentional resources (Banich et al., 2000).
Countless studies that repeatedly test the Stroop effect reveal a few key recurring findings (van Maanen et al., 2009):
- Semantic interference : Naming the ink color of neutral stimuli (where the color is only shown in blocks, not as a written word) is faster than incongruent stimuli (where the word differs from its printed color).
- Semantic facilitation : Naming the ink of congruent stimuli (where the word and its printed color are in agreement) is faster than for neutral stimuli.
- Stroop asynchrony : The previous two findings disappear when reading the word, not naming the color, is the task at hand – supporting the claim that it is much more automatic to read words than to name colors.
Other experiments have slightly modified the original Stroop test paradigm to provide additional findings.
One study found that participants were slower to name the color of emotion words as opposed to neutral words (Larsen et al., 2006).
Another experiment examined the differences between participants with panic disorder and OCD. Even with using threat words as stimuli, they found that there was no difference among panic disorder, OCD, and neutral participants’ ability to process colors (Kampman et al., 2002).
A third experiment investigated the relationship between duration and numerosity processing instead of word and color processing.
Participants were shown two series of dots in succession and asked either (1) which series contained more dots or (2) which series lasted longer from the appearance of the first to the last dots of the series.
The incongruency occurred when fewer dots were shown on the screen for longer, and a congruent series was marked by a series with more dots that lasted longer.
The researchers found that numerical cues interfered with duration processing. That is, when fewer dots were shown for longer, it was harder for participants to figure out which set of dots appeared on the screen for longer (Dormal et al., 2006).
Thus, there is a difference between the processing of numerosity and duration. Together, these experiments illustrate not only all of the doors of research that Stroop’s initial work opened but also shed light on all of the intricate processing associations that occur in our brains.
Other Uses and Versions
The purpose of the Stroop task is to measure interference that occurs in the brain. The initial paradigm has since been adopted in several different ways to measure other forms of interference (such as duration and numerosity, as mentioned earlier).
Additional variations measure interference between picture and word processing, direction and word processing, digit and numerosity processing, and central vs. peripheral letter identification (MacLeod, 2015).
The below figure provides illustrations for these four variations:
The Stroop task is also used as a mechanism for measuring selective attention, processing speed, and cognitive flexibility (Howieson et al., 2004).
The Stroop task has also been utilized to study populations with brain damage or mental disorders, such as dementia, depression, or ADHD (Lansbergen et al., 2007; Spreen & Strauss, 1998).
For individuals with depression, an emotional Stroop task (where negative words, such as “grief,” “violence,” and “pain,” are used in conjunction with more neutral words, such as “clock,” “door,” and “shoe”) has been developed.
Research reveals that individuals who struggle with depression are more likely to say the color of a negative word slower than that of a neutral word (Frings et al., 2010).
The versatility of the Stroop task paradigm lends itself to be useful in a wide variety of fields within psychology. What was once a test that only examined the relationship between word and color processing has since been expanded to investigate additional processing interferences and to contribute to the fields of psychopathology and brain damage.
The development of the Stroop task not only provides novel insights into the ways in which our brain mechanisms operate but also sheds light on the power of psychology to expand and build on past research methods as we continue to uncover more and more about ourselves.
Critical Evaluation
Dishon-Berkovits and Algom (2000) argue that the Stroop effect is not a result of automatic processes but is due to incidental correlations between the word and its color across stimuli.
They suggest that participants unconsciously recognize these correlations, using word cues to anticipate the correct color hue they should name.
When testing with word-word stimuli, Dishon-Berkovits and Algom created positive, negative, and zero correlations.
They observed that zero correlations nearly eliminated Stroop effects, implying that the effects might be more about the way stimuli are presented rather than true indicators of automaticity or attention.
However, their methodology raised concerns:
- They had difficulty creating zero correlations with color-hue situations.
- Their study didn’t include a neutral condition, which means interference and facilitation were not examined.
- There’s a general finding that facilitation effects are smaller than interference effects, which their findings don’t necessarily support
Despite these considerations, the correlational approach does not invalidate Stroop’s original paradigm or the many studies based on it.
Stroop-based findings have been instrumental in understanding various clinical conditions like anxiety, schizophrenia, ADHD, dyslexia, PTSD, racial attributions, and others.
The takeaway is that while the theory proposed by Dishon-Berkovits and Algom introduces a fresh perspective, it does not negate the established findings and implications of the Stroop effect.
Instead, it encourages a deeper examination of how automaticity and attention might be influenced by certain environmental factors and correlations.
Describe why the Stroop test is challenging for us.
The Stroop test is challenging due to the cognitive conflict it creates between two mental processes: reading and color recognition. Reading is a well-learned, automatic process, whereas color recognition requires more cognitive effort.
When the word’s color and its semantic meaning don’t match, our brain’s automatic response to reading the word interferes with naming the color, causing a delay in response time and an increase in mistakes. This is known as the Stroop effect.
Banich, M. T., Milham, M. P., Atchley, R., Cohen, N. J., Webb, A., Wszalek, T., … & Magin, R. (2000). fMRI studies of Stroop tasks reveal unique roles of anterior and posterior brain systems in attentional selection . Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 12 (6), 988-1000.
Cohen, J. D., Dunbar, K., & McClelland, J. L. (1990). On the control of automatic processes: a parallel distributed processing account of the Stroop effect . Psychological Review, 97 (3), 332.
Dishon-Berkovits, M., & Algom, D. (2000). The Stroop effect: It is not the robust phenomenon that you have thought it to be . Memory & Cognition , 28 , 1437-1449.
Dormal, V., Seron, X., & Pesenti, M. (2006). Numerosity-duration interference: A Stroop experiment . Acta psychologica, 121 (2), 109-124.
Frings, C., Englert, J., Wentura, D., & Bermeitinger, C. (2010). Decomposing the emotional Stroop effect . Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 63 (1), 42-49.
Howieson, D. B., Lezak, M. D., & Loring, D. W. (2004). Orientation and attention. Neuropsychological assessment , 365-367.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow . Macmillan.
Kampman, M., Keijsers, G. P., Verbraak, M. J., Näring, G., & Hoogduin, C. A. (2002). The emotional Stroop: a comparison of panic disorder patients, obsessive–compulsive patients, and normal controls, in two experiments. Journal of anxiety disorders, 16 (4), 425-441.
Lansbergen, M. M., Kenemans, J. L., & Van Engeland, H. (2007). Stroop interference and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a review and meta-analysis . Neuropsychology, 21 (2), 251.
Larsen, R. J., Mercer, K. A., & Balota, D. A. (2006). Lexical characteristics of words used in emotional Stroop experiments . Emotion, 6 (1), 62.
MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: an integrative review . Psychological bulletin, 109 (2), 163.
MacLeod, C. M. (2015). The stroop effect. Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology.
McMahon, M. (2013). What Is the Stroop Effect. Retrieved November, 11 .
Milham, M. P., Banich, M. T., Claus, E. D., & Cohen, N. J. (2003). Practice-related effects demonstrate complementary roles of anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices in attentional control . Neuroimage, 18 (2), 483-493.
Monahan, J. S. (2001). Coloring single Stroop elements: Reducing automaticity or slowing color processing? . The Journal of general psychology, 128 (1), 98-112.
Sahinoglu B, Dogan G. (2016). Event-Related Potentials and the Stroop Effect. Eurasian J Med , 48(1), 53‐57.
Spreen, O., & Strauss, E. (1998). A compendium of neuropsychological tests: Administration, norms, and commentary . Oxford University Press.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions . Journal of experimental psychology, 18 (6), 643.
van Maanen, L., van Rijn, H., & Borst, J. P. (2009). Stroop and picture—word interference are two sides of the same coin . Psychonomic bulletin & review, 16 (6), 987-999.
Further information
- Exampe of a stroop effect lab report
- Picture-word interference is a Stroop effect: A theoretical analysis and new empirical findings
Today in the History of Psychology
log in help
- Pages & Files
to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!
|
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Citation. Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643-662. https://
STUDIES OF INTERFERENCE IN SERIAL VERBAL REACTIONS. J. Ridley Stroop. [ 1] (1935) George Peabody College. First published in Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643-662. INTRODUCTION. Interference or inhibition (the terms seem to have been used almost indiscriminately) has been given a large place in experimental literature. The ...
This reprinted article originally appeared in Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol 18(6), Dec 1935, 643-662. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1936-01863-001.) In this study pairs of conflicting stimuli, both being inherent aspects of the same symbols, were presented simultaneously (a name of one color printed in the ink of another color--a word stimulus and ...
Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions. March 1992. Journal of Experimental Psychology General 121 (1):15-23. 121 (1):15-23. DOI: 10.1037/0096-3445.121.1.15. Authors: J. Ridley Stroop ...
Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Stroop, J. R. Journal of Experimental Psychology Vol. 18, Iss. 6, (Dec 1935): 643-662. DOI:10.1037/h0054651. This is a limited preview of the full PDF. Try and log in through your library or institution to see if they have access. It appears you don't have support to open PDFs in this web browser.
Journal of Experimental Psychology by John Ridley Stroop (Stroop, 1935a). Since that time, I am most grateful to Mrs. Zelma Stroop and to Mr. Fred Stroop for kindly providing me with much of the information upon which this article is based. Additional information was drawn from Stroop's obituary, written by his friend and colleague, Lewis ...
Seashore - 1928 - Journal of Experimental Psychology 11 (1):45. An information analysis of verbal and motor responses in a forced-paced serial task. Earl A. Alluisi, Paul F. Muller Jr & Paul M. Fitts - 1957 - Journal of Experimental Psychology 53 (3):153. Some variables influencing the rate of gain of information.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 29, 245-65. ... Stroop J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology 18, 643-62. Crossref. Google Scholar. Warren R. E. (1972). Stimulus encoding and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology 94, 90-100. Crossref.
The Loewenstein-Acevedo Scale for Semantic Interference and Learning (LASSI-L) is a sensitive, reliable, efficient tool for detecting cognitive decline in pre HD and could prove to be a useful biomarker for clinical research in preHD. Expand. 1. Highly Influenced. [PDF] 10 Excerpts.
Abstract. The Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT; Stroop, 1935) is one of the oldest and most commonly used tests in psychology for examining executive functions and response inhibition. There are a number of versions of the task, several of which have been translated into different languages and modified for use with diverse populations, including ...
The Stroop effect is one of the best known phenomena in all of cognitive science and indeed in psychology more broadly. It is also one of the most long standing, having been reported by John Ridley Stroop in the published version of his dissertation in 1935 [1].
Journal of Experimental Psychology VOL. XVIII, No. 6 DECEMBER, 1935 STUDIES OF INTERFERENCE IN SERIAL VERBAL REACTIONS BY J. RIDLEY STROOP» George Peabody College INTRODUCTION Interference or inhibition (the terms seem to have been used almost indiscriminately) has been given a large place in experimental literature. The investigation was begun by
Stroop, J. R. 1935. Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology 18: 643-662. MacLeod, Colin M. 1991. Half a Century of Research on the Stroop Effect: An Integrative Review. Psychological Bulletin 109: 163-203. The Experiment
(This reprinted article originally appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1935, Vol 18, 643-662. The following abstract of the original article appeared in PA, Vol 10:1863.) In this study pairs of conflicting stimuli, both being inherent aspects of the same symbols, were presented simultaneously (a name of one color printed in the ink of another color—a word stimulus and a ...
One of the most widely researched psychological phenomena of all times is the Stroop effect (see Stroop, 1935). The classic Stroop task is very simple: you have to name the color of words printed on a page. ... Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 219-234. 10.1037/0096-1523.20.2.219 ...
CORINE DE RUITER* and Jos F. BROSSCHOT Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat IS, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Received 17 March 1993) Summary—Interference effects on threat words in anxious subjects on the emotional Stroop task have generally been interpreted as evidence for mood-congruent ...
Stroop Effect Experiment in Psychology
John Ridley Stroop (/ s t r uː p /; March 21, 1897 - September 1, 1973), better known as J. Ridley Stroop, was an American psychologist whose research in cognition and interference continues to be considered by some as the gold standard in attentional studies and profound enough to continue to be cited for relevance into the 21st century. [1] [3] However, Christianity was the real passion ...
In 1935, J. Ridley Stroop published a hallmark paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology titled "Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions".
Journal of Experimental Psychology VOL. XVIII, No. 6 DECEMBER, 1935 STUDIES OF INTERFERENCE IN SERIAL VERBAL REACTIONS BY J. RIDLEY STROOP» George Peabody College INTRODUCTION Interference or inhibition (the terms seem to have been used almost indiscriminately) has been given a large place in experimental literature. The investigation was begun by
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643-662. (activity 4.1 continued from previous page) ... It is based on the work of Stroop (1935). activities From a TOPSS unit lesson plan on Sensation and Perception, published by the American Psychological Association in 2011. This activity is intended for TOPSS members for use in their classes. ...
John Ridley Stroop is best known for his dissertation research which was later published in 1935. Stroop x . Stroop's article can be found online through the Classics in the History of Psychology website. ... Journal Of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643-662. doi:10.1037/h0054651. Stroop, J. R. (1935). The basis of Ligon's theory.
Stroop (Stroop, 1935) - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. 1. The document discusses studies of interference in serial verbal reactions, specifically comparing the interfering effects of color stimuli on reading color names and word stimuli on naming colors. 2. An experiment presented color names printed in conflicting ink colors and ink colors ...
近日，绍兴文理学院心理学系高奇扬课题组在Journal of Experimental Child Psychology（SSCI，IF=1.8,中科院2区）期刊上发表了题为"Advanced theory of mind and children's prosocial lie-telling in middle childhood: A training study"的研究论文。该研究深入探讨了儿童高级心理理论（Advanced ...