ACTIVITY 06

STROOP EFFECT
The Stroop Effect is named after the psychologist who
devised it and it is one of the most famous cognitive
experiments. It shows how cognitive interference can
affect performance.
This is a repeated measures design experiment, all your
participants will take part in condition A and condition B, this
controls for participants variables. To control for practice
and order effects, counterbalance the order of presentation
of tasks e.g. participant 1 does A followed by B, participant 2
does B followed by A etc. Control situational variables by
standardisation, give all your participants the same
instructions and test them in the same room, in silence.
The task is to name the colour of the ink the words are written
in (e.g. RED the correct response is blue, RED the correct
response is red) as fast as possible, the experimenter will
record the time in seconds on a stopwatch.
In this experiment the IV is whether colour and meaning of
word coincide or conflict and the DV is the time taken to
complete the task.

EXPERIMENTAL HYPOTHESIS
Participants will take significantly longer (secs) to complete
task B where colour and meaning of word conflict, than task A
where colour and meaning coincide.

DISCUSSION
The Stroop Effect occurs because reading has become an
automatic process for most of us. Even though we have been
instructed to just name the colour of the ink, we cannot switch
off reading the word, therefore in task B we read first and then
identify the colour, as they conflict this causes cognitive
interference, taking extra time.
What do you think this test could be used for?
Are there any groups of people it would not work with?
Further ideas: https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/words.html
TASK A

RED BLACK

BLUE BROWN

GREEN BLUE

ORANGE RED

BROWN YELLOW

BLACK ORANGE

RED GREEN

YELLOW BLACK

BLUE RED

GREEN BROWN
TASK B

BROWN BLUE

BLACK RED

RED ORANGE

GREEN YELLOW

YELLOW BLUE

ORANGE BLACK

RED BROWN

BROWN RED

BLUE BLUE

BLACK GREEN
DATA RECORDING SHEET

Participant Task A Task B

No: time: time: