Table of contentsIntroductionResearchReviewIntroductionThe studies evaluated in this article all correspond to the Stroop effect, either by directly studying the effect or by determining the mechanism by which it is product. The Stroop effect occurs when a written word differs from the color in which it is written and can be understood as a delay in obtaining a correct response when presented with combinations of words and colors that do not match. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayResearchJ. Ridely Stroop was the man who first introduced the Stroop effect, coined after his own name, into modern psychology. In his 1935 study “Studies on Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions,” Stroop investigated the effect of interference on reaction times when asked to recite the printed words. He based his hypothesis on previous work on interference and inhibition, stating that an incongruence in word-color pairing would lead to an increase in reaction time or an incorrect response. He conducted two versions of his experiment, one by reading the word as a task and the other by naming the color of the print. For the first, he called on 70 undergraduate volunteers (14 men and 56 women). This experiment included four conditions, two lists with two forms, and participants were asked to read the lists as fast as possible without errors while the experimenter followed a list printed in black ink. Half read the lists in the order b1, d2, d1, b2 and the other half read them in reverse order to account for training or fatigue effect. The second part of the experiment used 100 student volunteers, with the task being to name the color. not the word. Stroop found that word-color incongruence did not reliably increase word reading times, but that when naming colors, the presence of words for other colors increased reaction times. He then concluded: "The associations that were formed between the word stimuli and the reading response are obviously more effective than those that were formed between the color stimuli and the naming response." » (Stroop, 1935) Although there was no formal statement as to whether Stroop's hypothesis was supported based on the results, it is clear that his hypothesis was partially supported. There isn't much room for improvement, Stroop took the effects of practice and fatigue into account in his methods and had a decent representation of the population. If I had to improve in any way, it would be to include more men in the study. Zajano and Gorman, in their 1986 study, “Stroop Interference as a Function of Percentage of Congruent Items,” sought to validate the Stroop effect, while also investigating the potential for additional contributors to response competition. They hypothesized: "If the interference effect can be explained entirely in terms of response competition, the mixed list used in the present study should result in a direct linear function of response times versus percentage of congruent elements. (Zajano & Gorman, 1986) Their experiment consisted of a one-factor within-subject design, with 33 undergraduate students (31 female, 2 male) who volunteered to participate in the study. Subjects then received 11 lists of different levels of color-word congruence, in random order, followed by an additional list of 0% congruence. The results showed that the competitionresponse caused the difference in reaction times and, with a 95% CI, all points were significantly affected by this response competition. The authors concluded that due to the “curvilinear” nature of the data, inhibition is consistent with it. of selective attention caused by response inhibition. Their hypothesis was supported by their results. The only problem is that this experiment lacks subjects; there are only 2 men with 31 women, this is not a good representation of the population and therefore cannot be generalized safely. MacKinnon, Geiselman, and Woodward studied how effort affected Stroop interference in their 1985 study "Effects of Effort on Stroop Interference." Their study included 64 subjects (32 men and 32 women) selected from a UCLA introductory psychology course. Each subject received 4 lists: a practice with neutral-colored words, a control with plus (+) signs instead of words, and 2 Stroop lists. Subjects were then asked to name the color of the print while being timed by the experimenter. The order was counterbalanced across subjects. The experiment had two conditions: low incentive, subjects were informed that the trial was just practice, and high incentive, subjects were informed that the trial was a competitive game. The authors hypothesized “that competition and the existence of a desired reward would result in greater [subject] effort than a procedure without competition.” As a result of this manipulation of task-specific effort, Stroop interference should be reduced if the interference can be brought under attentional control. (MacKinnon, Geiselman, & Woodward, 1985) Results showed that low prompting had no significant effect and high prompting had the effect of reducing Stroop interference supporting the hypothesis. The authors concluded that Stroop interference could be reduced if efforts were made in this direction. I don't see any room for improvement here; Subjects were not informed of the true intentions of the study in order to avoid good/bad subject bias and there was a good sample population. Augustinova and Ferrand investigated the automaticity of reading printed words in their 2014 study "Automaticity of word reading: evidence from the Stroop semantic paradigm." Their study did not include any subjects because it was only a comprehensive evaluation of other work rather than an independent study. As this was a compilation of several other previous studies, there were no formal procedures or hypotheses to report. However, where this study lacked formal procedure, it made up for this deficit with comprehensive data. The following result can represent the sum of these data: no matter how much effort is made to inhibit it, reading a word is automatic. Augustinova and Ferrand concluded that the Stroop effect might be caused or at least amplified by the automaticity of word reading when asked to name the color of the print if the word represents a different word. This study is not based on any solid experimentation but nevertheless claims causality; I would have liked to see original work done rather than rehashing several previous studies together. The final study is “The time course of inhibition in the color-response and written-response versions of the Stroop task.” completed Sugg and MsDonald in 1944. This experiment used 56 subjects, undergraduate students, required to participate in a course at New Mexico State University. This study seeks to validate or refute the hypotheses of previous work on which this one is based, however.