Stroop Effect

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Cognitive psychology studied in the human psyche is the underlying processes that influence behaviour. Processing is a crucial element of cognitive psychology, cumulating memory, emotion and behaviour. A continuation of processing involves interference and automatic processing, where interference occurs between the competition between two strong/weak pathways and the influence it has on impeding or facilitating information processing such as attention. Attention in reference to the Principles of Psychology (1890) “is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought… It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal with things effectively …show more content…
Specifically, the role of attention and interference have in the ability to distinguish interfering colour stimuli upon reading names of colours serially (Stroop J.R (1935). The experiment included seventy college undergraduates (14 males and 56 females) and were told to read two whole sheets, one test being known as the incongruently coloured words, meaning that the names of colour that were being read were printed in different ink, and the other known as the control group of the words being printed in black. They were randomly split in genders with each group reading in correct order of form 1 and 2 while the other reversed the order. Before beginning the test a ten word sample was read with instructions to read as quickly as possible and to always correct the erros. On the signal, the sheet which the subject had face down on the table was turned by the participant and read aloud, the time taken for the correct responses to be verbalised was …show more content…
W. (2004)).Theories include, processing speed, selective attention, parallel distributed processing. However, the most widely accepted is Automatic word recognition. The theory believes that in the comparison between colours and words, where recognising colours is not considered an automatic process and requires hesitancy before responding, whereas, the brain is able to understand automatically to meaning of words as a result of habit (Coloring Single Stroop Elements (2010)). Which implies that the parallel distributed processing model fits as it suggests that the brain analyses different and specific pathways for different tasks. Where some pathways, such as reading, are stronger than the others (PsycNET.