Experimental Psychology Stroop Effect Essay

The look assessed in this article discusses the Stroop import. The Stroop load occurs when our selective perplexity fails and we atomic number 18 unable to att destroy to some information and ignore the rest. This analyse tests the Stroop answer by presenting the participant with a congruent or incongruent enunciate and the participant is asked to type the food color of the joint of honor or the unquestionable say in a series of trials. In this research, it has been found that participants had speedy reaction generation for congruent items and pokey reaction times for incongruent items.In addition, participants had fast-paced reaction times when asked to type the forge and slower reaction times when asked to type the color. Racing Horses and the Stroop Effect We cave in the talent to attend to the things were looking for however, sometimes this ability of selective oversight becomes compromised. Wheres Waldo is a game that tests superstars ability to selectively attend to a stimuli you must finger Waldo in an overly herd picture that attempts to hide him. If stars selective attention becomes compromised, one would either non be able to locate Waldo or would arrogate a long amount of time to locate Waldo.We can correction this phenomenon of selective attention via the Stroop effect. According to J. R Stroop, it takes more time to come to colorise than to read color r for each ones (1935). In addition, it is accelerated to name the color for congruent items than incongruent items. congruent items include items such(prenominal) the book of fib red in the color red incongruent items include items such as the vocalise blue in red ink. In a basic Stroop look into, participants be provided with a list of congruent treatments and a list of incongruent war crys and atomic number 18 asked to name the color of the word or the actual word itself.Having a big Stroop effect indicates that ones selective attention has failed. In Stroops original variation of the experiment, results demonstrated that when participants were asked to name the color of the ink of an incongruent item, in that location was an augment in ink appointee time. However, when the participants were asked to name the word, incongruence of the ink to the word did not have an effect on the amount of time it took to read it (Dunbar & MacLeod, 1984). In Kevin Dunbar & Colin M. MacLeods paper, they refer to what is known as the gymnastic horse unravel mannequin (1984).This horse race exemplar attempts to explain the Stroop phenomenon as a race in the midst of twain responses. The first response, which always pay heedms to win the race, is the response to the word the second response is the one to the color of the ink. The horse race model states that color appointment is slower than word designation because words and color have different branching times when the faster process finishes, its result can intervene with the slower process . The simplest hypothesis, consistent with all the evidence, is that the baulk occurs after identification (Morton & Chambers, 1973).Words interfere strongly with color naming in an incongruent trial, one identifies the word first, the identification of color of the word only comes later and in that respect is a need to overcome the stupid response, which causes a slight delay in response time. The purpose of this experiment is to further test the horse race model of the Stroop effect. In this experiment, the two independent variable stars are congruency, whether the items are congruent or incongruent, and toil, participants go out be asked to name the color of the item or the word.Results will be deliberate by how long it takes participants to respond in each condition. There are several screamions made about this replication of the Stroop experiment firstly, we predict that on that point will be a main effect of congruency we expect an overall Stroop effect. Secondly, w e predict that at that place will be a main effect of designate we expect that participants should be faster to type words than colors. Finally, we predict an interaction between congruency and job we expect that the Stroop effect will be larger for typing colors than for typing words.Method Participants Twenty-one undergraduate, manly and female students were recruited from an experimental lab class at the City University of hot York Brooklyn College. Materials and Design In this within subjects design, we use a 2 (Congruency Congruent vs. Incongruent) x 2 (Task Type Naming color vs. Naming word) factorial the dependent variable measured was reaction time. The stimuli were presented on a 17 inch computer monitor and participants were given a standard keyboard for their responses.The stimuli used were four words red, green, blue, yellow and four colors red, green, blue, yellow. For the independent variable of congruency, there were four possible congruent items and twelve poss ible incongruent items. For the independent variable of task, there was one block of forty-eight trials petition the participant to type the word and one block of forty-eight trials intercommunicate the participant to type the color. The allege of each block was randomly situated by the computer for each participant. Half of the participants did the word naming thusly color naming the some other half did color naming accordingly word naming.Each trial begins with the presentation of a fastening grouchy in the center of the screen, visible for calciferol milliseconds. The fixation cross is outside and immediately followed by the word and color stimulus this stimulus remained on the screen until a response was typed and the participant pressed the spacebar key. There are four possible responses red, green, blue, and yellow. Responses are given by having the participants type the word into the keyboard. Immediately after the response, the stimuli were removed from the screen and the next trial appeared 500 milliseconds after the participant pressed the spacebar.Procedure Participants were given instruction manual by the experimenter, separated into groups, and sent randomly to different rooms which held the computers they would be victimisation for this experiment. Each participant was given a total of ninety-six trials there was one block of forty-eight trials asking the participant to type the word and one block of forty-eight trials asking the participant to type the color. The order of each block was randomly determined by the computer for each participant. Half of the participants did the word naming then color naming the other half did color naming then word naming.The participants were prompted to read the instructions on the screen and enter their initials prior to starting the experiment. Once the experiment begins, there is a fixation cross displayed for 500 milliseconds. Following the fixation cross, the task cue and stimuli were displayed at the same time until the participant responded. by and by the participant responded and pressed the spacebar key, they were prompted with another trial. After each participant faultless the experiment they were instructed to return to the classroom where they were debriefed by the experimenter and allowed to leave.Results The results of this experiment are presented in Figure 1. The implicate for the naming color/congruent condition is 1044. 57ms the blotto for the naming color/incongruent condition is 1210. 62 ms the mean for the naming word/congruent condition is 838. 05 ms and the mean for the naming word/incongruent condition is 862. 24 ms. The mean reaction times (RTs) from each condition were submitted to a 2 (Task type name word vs. name color) x 2 (Congruency congruent vs. incongruent) within-subjects ANOVA. The main effect for task was significant, F(1,20) = 62. 48, MSE = 1616576. 0, p 0. 05 this shows that participants had a faster RT when asked to name the word (M = 850. 14 ms) as opposed to when asked to name the color (M = 1127. 60 ms).Mean RTs were faster for word than color naming. In addition to a main effect of task, there is a significant main effect of congruency, F(1,20) = 22. 65, MSE = 190000. 30, p 0. 05 this illustrates that participants had a faster RT when the items were congruent (M = 941. 31 ms) than when the items were incongruent (M = 1036. 43 ms) Mean RTs were faster for congruent items than incongruent items.Finally, we found a ignificant interaction between congruency and task type, F(1,20) = 42. 43, MSE = 105648. 11, p 0. 05 this interaction demonstrates that there is a greater difference between the agency of congruent and incongruent items when asked to name color than there is between the path of congruent and incongruent items when asked to name the word. Discussion We predicted a main effect of congruency which is, in fact, what we see from our results. We see this main effect due to the Stroop effect, which st ates that it is faster to name the color for congruent items than incongruent items.In addition, we expected to see a main effect of task type and that the word task will produce faster RTs than the color task which is precisely what we have found. We can explain this finding with the theories of the horse race model. It has been found, through antecedent research, that reading words is a faster process than color naming because reading is an automatic process (Dunbar & MacLeod, 1984). We predicted to see that naming the color will intensify the Stroop effect whereas naming the word will minimize the Stroop effect we have found exactly this in our results. These outcomes can be explained with the horse race model as well.The horse race model assumes two things first, words and colors have different processing times color naming is slower than word naming. Second, the Stroop effect is asymmetrical when the faster process is finished, the result of that process can interfere with the slower process. Words interfere strongly with color naming however, colors interfere weakly with word naming. MacLeods (1991) hear explained This speed difference is seen as particularly small when two potential responses (e. g. , one from a word and one from an ink color) compete to be the response actually produced.The time cost of this ambition is interference. This general interpretation is referred to as response competition occurring at the end of a horse race, because the two codes are seen as racing to operate final output. (p. 187) One of the flaws of this experiment is that it is possible that not all participants are proficient in the placement of keys on a computer keyboard this would concern the reaction time for theses participants as they would need extra time to find the keys. other flaw is that we didnt take into account typing errors and the schedule used did not record error rate. This could mean that we have not successfully measured one of the items we a ttempted to measure.We attempted to see if there was a difference in processing time between the task of naming the word and the task of naming the color. Since we did not take into account typing errors and error rate, it is possible that a participant could have responded quick with an incorrect response and therefore caused the RT time to be quicker. The greatest daub of this experiment is the sample size, 21 participants. In future studies it is recommended that this experiment be run with at least 30 participants who can comfortably describe the keys on a standard computer keyboard.In addition to a larger sample size, perhaps changing the colors and the names of colors (from red, green, blue, and yellow to, for example, pink, purple, orange, grey) would yield a smaller or larger Stroop effect. Another change that can be experimented with is age. MacLeod (1991) references a study done by Lund (1927) which finds that children younger than reading age were faster on color namin g than word reading. Perhaps there may be difference between children that are younger than reading age, children who have just recently well-read the alphabet, and/or children who just recently learned to read.Also, could there be a difference between children, adolescents, middle-age, and/or old-age? MacLeod (1991) also references a study conducted by Ligon (1932) that tested the differential- execute concept in children between the ages of about 5-14. Ligon found that practice and training did improve RTs for both color naming and word naming tasks, however, the difference between the skills remained unchanged. A final suggestion for future research would pose this question would we find similar results if ran such a study with adults?