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Introduction

The Stroop effect

The Stroop effect is a task invented by J.A Stroop in which participant sees a list of words (colour
words) printed in an ink that differs from the word (e.g.: Green written in Blue ink). The participants are
asked to name the ink colour in which the word is written resulting in a greater difficulty in doing so
relative to a condition in which non words form the stimuli.Thus Stroop effect demonstrates the
difference in the nature of automatic processing versus conscious visual control.
The Stroop effect is so named after two researchers Jaensch and John Ridley Stroop.

Earlier Researches
Stroop published his work in 1935 but the roots of his findings can be traced to earlier researches, which
are cited below.

J.M.Cattell (1886) in his research observed that objects and colours took longer to name aloud than the
corresponding words took to read aloud. E.g.: Saying Red aloud to a colour patch was slower than
saying Red to the word Red. This was attributed to difference in practice in the two tasks and this
finding was supported by Lund (1927).

Lund (1927) found children younger than reading age were faster on color naming than on word
reading. Both color naming and word reading times improved across grade one to grade nine yet the
difference in both the skills remained unchanged i.e. word reading was faster then color naming once
children learnt the reading of words.

Peterson (1918 & 1925) suggested the differences might be because there might be many responses
associated with a single colour e.g. Red colour: Love, Blood, Danger but only one response with the
word i.e. to read. This finding was supported by Telford (1930) & Lund (1927)

Hollingsworth (1923) suggested that the difference in color naming and word reading was because since
word reading was automatic it required only articulation (naming) whereas colour naming required both
articulation and association.

These researchers formed the background for the study conducted by Stroop.

Stroops Classic Study

Stroop conducted a series of experiments where he presented participants with different stimuli
on two different tasks
In one task participants were shown only colour patches and the speed with which they name the
colour patches was noted. In the other task colours were presented in the form of incongruent colour
word units i.e. name of one colour written in another colour ink. The participant’s task was to say the
colour of the ink and ignore the words. The colors used were red, blue, green and yellow. This was not
easy to do. Naming the colors in incongruent color word units was harder than naming colors in simple
color patches. This phenomenon was noticed by Jaensch (1929) and was first reported by Stroop (1935).
Hence the phenomenon is known as Jaensch-Stroop Effect.
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The word interfering with the naming of the color is a fair reflection of the P’s experience. The
volume of P’s voice goes up, reading falters, now and then words break abortively, and there are
embarrassed giggles. These and other signs of strain and effort are common. It is important that the color
names and the irrelevant color-word involve identical motor responses.

The basic features of the task are:

# The critical response is a vocal linguistic one. It is not enough to see the color, it must be named aloud.
# Two motor-linguistic responses are implicated in the word-color unit one that involves in vocalizing
the color name and second that associated with reading the color word.
# Only one of these two responses must prevail – calling out the color name. The required response i.e.
naming the colour can be obstructed by the arousal of a motor response that is incompatible with it i.e.
naming the word. Since one cannot say two words at once, the greater the tendency to read the word, the
harder it is to name the colour.

Stroop’s Account: According to Stroop (1935), the associations that have been formed between the
word stimuli and the reading response, are evidently more effective than those that have been formed
between the colour stimuli and naming response. Since these associations are products of training, and
since the difference in their strength corresponds roughly to the difference in training in reading words
and naming colours, it seems reasonable to conclude that the difference in speed in reading names of
colours from colour patches and in naming colours from incongruent colour word units may be
satisfactorily accounted for by the difference in training in the two activities.

Different variations on Stroop procedure:

The Stroop effect is observed with lists of stimuli, with single stimuli, and with many variations on the
response acquired such as
1. Picture-word interference task [congruent or incongruent embedded words inside line drawings]
2. Embossing color words in white letters on colored plastic tape and Ss had to name the tape color.
3. Sorting or Matching Incongruent Vs congruent color word cards
4. Auditory Analogs [say HIGH to the ‘low’ pitch tone and vice versa]
5 Response modality: oral Vs manual: Keele (1972) argued that when Ss pressed buttons to indicate
their responses (rather than speaking them), only color words interfered; non-color words and scrambled
color words did not differ from control. Keele’s use of manual responses are known to decrease
interference overall.
6. Trial Sequence: Interference increases when to be ignored word on one trial turns out to be the to be
named color on next trial (e.g: green in red ink precedes blue in green ink). These are known as
sequential effects in Stroop task.

Variations of word context: Klien’s Study:

Klein (1964) investigated the effect of verbal texts, which varied in their relationship to the
colours. In the experiment, six conditions were used. In each condition the verbal text consisted of items
typed in the colours red, blue, green yellow Following were the six conditions:
Condition A – nonsense syllables. E.g. bsb, evgic, bhdr
Condition B – rare English words. E.g. eft, helot, abjure
Condition C – common English words. E.g. put, heart, take, friend
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Condition D – colour-related meanings (words that were not themselves colour names but implicated the
colors in their meaning). E.g. lemon, grass, fire, sky
Condition E – colour-names distant (different words of the same response class). E.g. tan, purple, grey,
black
Condition F – colour-names close (standard Stroop condition – incongruent combinations of colour and
word)
It was found that in all conditions, reading time was significantly slower on conflict pages than
on colors alone. As the words became more meaningful the interference increased.
Thus the verbal text affects the ease of colour naming. When two motor responses reading the
word and naming the colour are competing for one response channel, it is possible that reading delay is
produced by an effort to ‘hold back’ one of them (word naming in this case). To make the appropriate
motor-response, S has to expend effort momentarily to restrain the near-threshold irrelevant response,
naming the word in this case. This effort may be reflected in the slowed reading time.

Additional researches:

Keele (1972) argued that interference must occur after the memory retrieval stage. When
subjects pressed buttons to indicate their responses (rather than speaking them), only color words
interfered; non-color words and scrambled color words did not differ from control words. The scrambled
condition is surprising; every stimulus began with the same letter as its corresponding word (rde, genre,
ywole, and belu), which ordinarily causes interference. Possibly, Keele’s use of manual responses,
known to decrease interference, overall, is responsible.
Redding and Gerjets (1977) demonstrated that incongruent words produced 177 ms of
interference when the response to ink color was oral and only 98 ms interference when the response to
ink color was manual; congruent words produced 23 ms of facilitation for oral responses and 67 ms for
manual responses. Curiously, there appeared to be less interference but more facilitation when the
response was manual compared with oral.

Reverse Stroop Effect

Normally a word interferes with naming a colour or picture, but when colour or pictures
interferes with reading of the word, it is known as Reverse Stroop Effect. A Reverse Stroop effect (i.e.,
interference with word-reading caused by an incompatible, irrelevant ink colour) appears to be possible,
but this effect is not simply a consequence of the relative speeds of processing each dimension but is
dependent upon training.

Theoretical Accounts of the Stroop Effect:

Kleins explanation for Stroop effect

According to Klein (1964), ‘Interference’ from the word consists essentially in the disposition to SAY it.
It is the COMPETITION from the word to say it. The word’s capacity to produce arousal of its motor
components is termed as attention-catching or ATTENSIVE power of the word [term borrowed from
Titchener]. The greater this power, the more interference the word exerts. So, it is necessary for the S to
seek additional stimulation from the region of relevant information [color] in order to produce
appropriate motor response [color-name]. Klein saw interference as resulting from the need to
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“restimulate” with the ink colour, to overcome the strong tendency to produce the word, although the
mechanism of restimulation was not specified

Other Explanations for Stroop effect

1. Relative Speed-of-Processing View

In its simplest form, this view agrees with the fact that words are read faster than colours are
named. This speed difference is seen as particularly critical when two potential responses (e.g., one from
a word and one from an ink colour) compete to be the response actually produced. The time cost of this
competition 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 control the final output.
According to Posner and Snyder (1975), the usual Stroop effect arises because of response
competition between vocal responses to the printed word and the ink colour. Secondly, the direction of
interference depends upon the time taken for each response. Words are read faster than colours can be
named. Thus, a colour naming response received stronger interference from the word, than the reverse.
Thirdly, words often facilitate the vocal output to colour with which they share a common name. These
three results suggest that colour naming and reading go on parallel and without interference until close
to the output.
Thus the elements of relative speed and interference at the stage of response output are
highlighted. These are the two essential elements of the relative speed-of-processing account of Stroop
effect.

2. Automaticity View
The second explanation is the Automaticity account, which was rooted in Cattell’s (1986) work
over a century ago. Here the basic idea is that processing of one dimension requires much more attention
than does processing of other dimension. Thus, naming the ink colour requires more of the attentional
resources than does reading the words. Presumably, this imbalance is because we extensively read words
as opposed to naming ink colours. Under this view, the asymmetry between colour naming and word
naming that is the fundamental characteristic of the Stroop task must occur. Words are read very
automatically, colours require considerable attention to be named.

This description is based on the theories of La Berge and Samends (1974), Posner and Snyder (1975)
and many others. All of these investigations show Automaticity as a gradient that develops with
learning. Thus, word reading was very automatic; the colour naming was much less automatic. Most
automatic processing could then interfere with less automatic processing, but not vice versa. The Stroop
Effect is an interesting case especially because the two dimensions differ so much in how automatically
they are processed.

3. Perceptual Encoding
Most of the explanations of Stroop Effect have considered the phenomenon in terms of response
competition. Such views are often referred to as ‘late selection’ accounts, in that the conflict occurs late
in processing, at response stage, as opposed to ‘early selection’ where the conflict occurs at encoding
stage. The best-known version of early selection was put forward by Hock and Egeth (1970) – the
perceptual encoding account. Its basic idea is that encoding of the ink colour information is slowed by
incompatible information from a colour word opposed to a neutral control. The encoding account has
not been very prominent since then.
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4. Parallel Distributed Processing Model

Cohen et al (1990) have used the framework of McClelland’s PDP approach to build a model of Stroop
effect. At the core of this model is the idea that processing occurs in the system through activation
moving along pathways of different strength. If only one pathway is activated at one time there is no
interference and processing is very fast. e.g. In colour patches condition only one pathway is active. If
two pathways are active together, one having more strength than the other it will cause interference in
the weaker strength pathway. The strength depends upon practice. In the Stroop effect experiment the
pathway of greater strength is the word naming and weaker strength is colour naming therefore the
interference.

5. Parallel Models
Logan (1980) gave the parallel model to explain Stroop effect. According to this model when a
dimension is processed evidence is gathered for it either automatically or by paying attention to several
other dimensions. If the other dimensions give consistent input the processing speed is fast but if
contrary information then speed is less. Greater the weight or importance of a dimension greater is the
interference caused by it. In congruent colour word units both the dimensions word and colour give
same input so speed is fast whereas in incongruent colour word units input given by word and colour are
different hence greater interference and more time taken.

Reasons for predictions in the experiment:

Several explanations have been given for the results obtained in stroop effect experiments, which have
been dealt with above and have been summarized below:

According to Posner and Snyder (1975), Stroop Effect arises because of response competition between
vocal response to the printed word and the ink color. Words are read faster than colors can be named.

Automaticity account holds that naming colors draws heavily on attentional resources than does reading
words.

Words are read very automatically. Colors require considerable attention to be named.