Stroop Effect In The Whole Colored Condition example essay topic

By the age of 5, most children have entered school and have begun to learn how to read. This soon becomes an automatic process so that it becomes hard NOT to read a word when presented with one. However, because this process becomes so automatic, the human mind tends to discard other aspects of the words we read. The Stroop effect is perhaps the most well known demonstration of this approach: turning an automatic mental skill into a great weakness. In particular, the skill of reading words makes it harder to perform an otherwise trivial task, like identifying the colors of those words.

Several studies have been performed to attempt to explain the phenomena identified by J. R Stroop. Hintzman, Carre, Eskridge, Owens, Shaff, and Sparks conducted one such study in 1972. They hypothesized that the Stroop effect was due to response competition between the stimulus and the ink color rather than an encoding interference. In their experiment students in an undergraduate learning class were asked to say aloud the color of ink as quickly as possible. Subjects were presented with four conditions each varying the stimulus. The four stimulus conditions were: (1) S, where ink color matched word name; (2) D, the word name was in a different color ink; (3) N, the word was a neutral with respect to color; and (4) C, in which the stimulus was a non-word.

The results indicated that word names that were written in the same color ink enhanced correct color naming performance not only in comparison with the control condition, but with the neutral control condition as well, thus supporting their hypothesis. In more recent study (1997), Besner, Stolz, and Boutilier also set out to test explanations of the Stroop effect by attempting to reduce or eliminate the Stroop effect in two different experiments. They hypothesized that if the reading the meaning of words is automatic process then it should not matter whether an entire word or single letter is in an ink color. Skilled readers will ignore it. In the first study, the participants were presented with stimuli in which half were matched and half were unmatched. They were told to ignore what the letters meant when strung together and just to identify what color it appeared.

In half the experiment, the whole word appeared in color, while in the other half one random letter was colored. The results from this experiment showed that the single colored letter produced a significantly smaller Stroop effect than the all colored words. The data from this experiment indicates that the automatic processing hypothesis is too strong with regard to explaining the Stoop effect. In attempt to further explore their hypothesis, a second experiment was conducted. It was designed to essentially eliminate the Stroop effect by removing the words that were written in and meant the same color and substituting them with a neutral stimulus.

Participants in experiment 2 were recruited from the same population as Experiment 1 and the same whole-word-colored, singled-letter-colored process was used. Once again, there was a Stroop effect in the whole-colored condition and no Stroop effect in the single-letter condition. This study continues to suggest that the Stroop effect does not result from automatic processing of stimuli, placing more support to the notion that the Stroop effect results from response competition. In yet another study conducted examining the role of response competition in producing the Stroop effect, Dunbar and MacCleod (1984) investigated the effects of transformed words, or words presented in unusual ways, such as upside down or backwards in relation to the Stroop interference effect. To explain their hypothesis they utilized a model known as the horse race model. This model characterizes the Stroop effect as a race between two responses, one of which is processed faster than the other (Moron and Chambers, 1973; Dunbar and MacCleod, 1984).

To test this model, Dunbar and MacCleod used four experiments, in which the reading of the color words was made progressively slower, by using increasingly more difficult transformations of the words. In experiments 5 ink colors were used and presented backward and upside-down-and-backwards. In experiment 2, the colored words were embedded in a larger set of irrelevant non-color words, again presented upside-down-and-backwards. Experiment 3 compared color words with normal stimuli.

And in experiment 4, normal stimuli were removed and replaced with backward stimuli. Dunbar and MacCleod predicted (1): that when word reading is slowed, there will be a decrease in the amount of interference in the ink-naming task, leading to a reversed Stroop effect; and (2): when word reading is slower than ink-naming, ink color will interfere with word reading. Their results did not support a simple horse race model and suggests support for a more interactive model. They found that only one prediction from the simple horse race model was supported. A reversed Stroop effect only occurred in the upside-down-and-backward transformation. Even when reading a colored word was slowed significantly, a Stroop interference effect still persisted in most cases.

Dunbar and MacCleod's results lead them to reject the explanation of the Stroop effect based solely on a speed of processing, or response competition model. Their findings suggest that simple models attempting to explain the Stroop effect are inadequate. In the current experiment, the Stroop effect will again be examined in normal and transformed presentations. Dunbar and MacCleod's study stimulus was presented in a backwards and upside down form. This experiment will test the influence of an upside-down presentation alone. Since this effect has been seen in more than one experiment, it is to be expected that the Stroop effect will be detected in the current experiment.

Method Participants The participants were 22 undergraduate students (6 males, 16 females) enrolled in an undergraduate psychology statistics course. The students (mean age 23.7) participated as part of a course requirement. Materials 2 sets of 24 index cards were prepared. The cards were white, cardboard with a thick red line at the top and 8 blue lines approximately 1/4 inch apart. One set of cards had 4 Xs in the middle of the card. The other set contained the words red, yellow, green, and blue.

The content of each card was written in one of 4 colors: red, yellow, green, and blue and each set contained 6 cards of each of the 4 colors. Procedure All participants received the same test conditions. The subjects were randomly divided into groups of 4 and each person participated. The two decks were shuffled independently and one deck was placed in front of the first participant. Their task would be to go through the deck of cards as fast as they could verbally telling their other group members what color ink was on the card. The participants were told to correct any mistakes immediately.

The participant would repeat this three times in succession. Any uncorrected errors were recorded by other members of the group and totaled at the end of the deck. The order of presentation was changed for each participant. The first participant received the deck first, then the word deck with the words right side up, then the word deck again, with the words upside down.

This procedure was repeated for each of the 4 group participants. Once each deck was finished, a time was recorded in seconds, along with any errors made in that deck. A timer for the group was selected at the start of the experiment and time was determined using a standard second hand on a wristwatch. Results For each of the three conditions, mean length of completion time was calculated and is presented in Table 1. Analysis of this data indicated that the mean time for completion of the stack right-side-up stack (X = 26.81) was significantly higher than the neutral stack (X = 23.86), t (21) = -3.20, p. 05. These data indicate that transforming the stimuli did not lead to a significant reduction in the Stroop effect.

Discussion The data clearly demonstrate the presence of the Stroop effect in this experiment. It was also shown that even when a stimulus was transformed it failed to reduce the Stroop effect in this data. These results confirm the findings of Hintzman et al. (1972), Besner, Stolz, and Boutilier (1997), and Dunbar and MacCleod (1984). The clear pattern of the Stroop effect emerges. The reasoning behind this, however is harder to see.

Hintzman et al (1972) hypothesized this effect is produce by a response competition, meaning the two pieces of information are in conflict when it comes time to respond, rather than when the information is first processed. They support the claim that if the Stroop effect was due primarily to inference, then it shouldn't matter whether or not a color word matches the color of the ink; interference would be produced in either case. Besner et al. (1997) and Dunbar and MacCleod (1984), on the other hand, chose to argue the other side of Hintzman's hypothesis: encoding interference.

This lends theory to the simple idea of competition of information isn't enough. It is more of an interaction between input, not that the participant can't decided what to say. Dunbar and MacCleod did see a reversal in upside-down-and-backward case, but however it was not seen in just the backward stimuli. This supports that just transforming the stimulus is not enough to completely eliminate the Stroop effect, as evident in the current study as well. What is clear about the Stroop effect is that it seems to result from an automatic process of some sort. Whether this is from a response competition or encoding interference is unable to be determined, as both hypotheses have been supported.

Reference Besner, D. M, Stolz, J.A., & Boutilier, C. (1997). The Stroop effect and the myth of automatic ity. Psycho nomic Bulletin &Review, 4,221-225 Dunbar, K. & MacCleod, C.M. (1984). A horse race of a different color: Stroop interference patterns with transformed words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10,622-639 Hintzman, D.L., Carre, F.A., Eskridge, V.L., Owens, A.M., Shaff, S.S., & Sparks, M.E. (1972). "Stroop" effect: Input or output phenomenon.

Journal of Experimental Psychology, 95,458-459 Table 1 Mean Times of Completion in Seconds as a Function of the Stroop effect Right-Side-Up Upside-Down M 23.86 26.81 26.20 SD 5.23 4.08 4.784.