Specificity of a Stroop Task - Research Paper Example

?How Does the Arrangement of Letters Affect an Individual’s Capa to the Right Color in a Stroop Task? by: [professor] [date of submission] How Does the Arrangement of Letters Affect an Individual’s Capacity to Name the Right Color in a Stroop Task? Abstract Developed in 1935, the original Stroop experiment involves the naming of the color of the paper where words are printed on. John Ridley Stroop’s study which aimed to demonstrate an individual’s reaction time to a task is now one of the most cited paper in experimental psychology. The experiment has evolved in various forms and is now used to study an individual’s capacity to plan, coordinate, execute actions and accomplish tasks. Using a 2x2 factorial study design, 46 participants were asked to complete two Stroop tasks – color-naming and word-naming – in various sessions. The main purpose for the study is to determine which of the two Stroop tasks will show a higher Stroop effect hence determining how learning can be impeded. The results of the study corroborate early findings of various Stroop experiments – word-naming takes a shorter time to complete compared to the color-naming task. Moreover, this study discovered that the time required to name the ink color of an incongruent color word is relatively high compared to the time required to name the color of a congruent color world. Introduction Executive attention is a “kind of selective attention that typically acts on the contents of a working memory and directs subsequent processing so as to achieve some goal” (Pages, n.d.), p. 281. It is related to an individual’s capability to control his or her attention (Rueda, Rothbart, Mccandliss, Saccomanno, & Posner, 2005) and may be trained and measured through various means. For example, in an experiment by M. Rosario Rueda, Mary K. Rothbart, Bruce D. McCandliss, Lisa Saccomanno, and Michael I. Posner (2005), utilized a variation of the Stroop experiments to measure a child’s executive attention before and after they underwent a 3-week training on attention. The Child Attention Network Test (ANT) utilized in this study required the subjects (aged 4 to 6 years old) to undergo both the congruent and incongruent trials. The results of the study showed that attention training is effective and younger children have greater capacity to develop their executive attention. The findings of this research are important because these have implications on learning. For example, in the modern classroom, teachers today complain of their student’s incapability to fix their attention on the lesson. As a result of this, students are unable to grasp the lesson immediately and will require the teacher to explain concepts various times. Students often miss out on critical information because of their inattention. For Jiang and Marvin Chun (2000), this “inattentional blindness” happens because humans ignore a lot of information which they perceive as irrelevant. Unfortunately, what students perceive as “unimportant” may not be truly so. Jiang and Chun says that in the same way that selective attention shapes learning, learning also shapes selective attention. The more facts a person ignores, the more incapable one is of learning new things. Hence, inattentive students often have difficulty in class, which can then turn them frustrated with their lessons. At worst, they can decide to abandon school altogether. From this point, the issue can become social and developmental in nature, but one can already see how inattention has to be addressed early on. Attention training may not be a fool-proof solution, but it presents a chance to reverse the trend of shorter attention span. Through the findings of Rueda et al. one can see how attention training can be most useful in the younger years and how such an investment can benefit young students in the future. The original Stroop experiments required subjects to name the color of a word stimuli, and ignoring what the word that the letters spell, for example BLUE. This example is an incongruent item and it can cause difficulty for the subject to give a response than when the color and the word coincide (congruent), such as in BLUE. The difference in the reading of time of congruent and incongruent items is referred to as the Stroop effect. By discovering the Stroop effect, researchers can discover the psychological process that enables individuals to plan, coordinate, execute actions and accomplish tasks. Various researches show that the selection of an action based on a requirement can help a person focus on an element of the experiment and ignore irrelevant information. For example, in a study by Tracy Brown (1996), she said that theories of reading have emphasized on the automaticity of word recognition, which makes it difficult for respondents to ignore word information. Meanwhile, another study by Colin Macleod and Penny Macdonald (2000) utilized variations of the Stroop experiment to determine what other factors can affect Stroop facilitation. In one variation, the researchers discovered that people found it easier to name the right color for both congruent and incongruent items when the word was printed in an upright orientation than in a novel orientation (for example, up-side-down or backwards). They also discovered that in a color-naming task, presenting a color information before the word can lead to improved response time. From these experiments, the researchers have discovered that “knowledge is realized as a pattern of activation across the [output] units, which changes with experience over trials in a continuous, non-linear fashion. Processing is ‘bottom-up’, running strictly from input to output” (Macleod & Macdonald, 2000, p. 385). Hence, it was discovered that subjects found it difficult to name the right color even when the words were conceptually identical (for example, LEMON printed in yellow or ROUGE printed in red). Except for the standard congruent condition, facilitation disappeared (Macleod & Macdonald, 2000, p. 386). This research is utilizes a variation of the Stroop experiment and attempts to discover whether the arrangement of letters can impede learning. The main research question for this paper is: “How does the arrangement of letters affect an individual’s capacity to name the right color in a Stroop task?” Our hypothesis is that when words are jumbled, it becomes much more difficult for the person to identify the right color it was printed with. Methods Participants Participants for this experiment were 46 college students. These students participated in this study because it wass a class requirement for an undergraduates level in an experimental psychology class. Procedure The experiment uses a 2x2 factorial design in wherein the subjects had to undergo testing for two (2) independent variables, both of which with two (2) separate levels. The first factor is named as “congruency” and its two levels are congruent and incongruent. The second factor is referred to as “task”. Its two levels are color-naming and letters/word-naming. Each participant will undergo two trial blocks. One (1) block of trials will focus on letter/word-naming and another will focus on color-naming. Every participant will then need to undergo these trials with half of the subjects doing the first block before the second block and the other half doing the second block before the first block. The order of each block is randomly determined by the computer for every participant in the experiment. The experiment was conducted on in-house computers and all participants were required to complete the Stroop task. For every trial, the subject will see a stimulus and will be required to type out their responses as quickly as they can. Congruent and incongruent items were shown randomly. By utilizing this approach, the researcher can determine where there are differences in the response time of the congruent and incongruent items as well as compare the difference between word-naming and random-letter naming. Results of the trial are assessed based on accuracy and response time. Accuracy is rated between 0 and 1 wherein 1 = highly accurate. Meanwhile, response time is recorded in milliseconds. Results Descriptive statistics for accuracy and response time for this Stroop experiment are found in table 1a and 1b below. 45 subjects have entered their responses for this experiment, a majority of them are females. Color naming for both color-congruent and color-incongruent items were highly accurate, with slightly higher accuracy for color-congruent items. Standard deviation was much lower for color-congruent and random letter-congruent items compared to the incongruent items. This result is, of course, expected as various researches have already shown this same trend. In terms of response time, one will see that it takes longer for the subject longer to identify the right color in color-incongruent and random letter-congruent items. In the color-incongruent item, one knows from previous researches that word-information and color-information compete for the answer (Brown, 1996; Macleod & Macdonald, 2000). Meanwhile, in the case of random letter-congruent items, it is possible that because the letters are at random, the observer is confused at which information to ignore since the letters themselves do not make sense. Meanwhile, in the case of the random letter-incongruent item, it is easier for the subjects to name the right color since the word-information does not compete with the color-information. These findings are consistent with published results of Stroop experiments wherein respondents find it more difficult to respond to incongruent items because the word information and color information compete for response. What is weird with this though, is that in the case of word/letter naming task, one might think that it becomes easier for the subject to identify words than random letters, yet this study shows that this is not the case. One will notice that word-naming for both congruent and incongruent items recorded relatively lower averages compared to the color-naming task. For example, word naming of congruent items is 786.83 or a mean difference of 197.06 from the result of the color-naming task of congruent items. A paired samples t-test was ran in order to determine if the difference in the means of the samples are different from zero. Paired samples t-test was ran for the following sample: (1) color-naming task for congruent items vs. color naming task for incongruent items, (2) word-naming task for congruent items vs. word naming task for incongruent items, (3) color-naming task for congruent items vs. word naming task for congruent items, (4) color-naming task for incongruent items vs. word-naming task for incongruent items. The result of this t-test can be found in table 2. Table 2: Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Lower Upper Pair 1 color.con - color.in -195.083 121.152 19.917 -235.477 -154.689 -9.795 36 .000 Pair 2 word.con - word.in -12.139 109.213 17.954 -48.552 24.274 -.676 36 .503 Pair 3 color.con - word.con 197.056 100.328 16.494 163.605 230.506 11.947 36 .000 Pair 4 color.in - word.in 380.000 205.262 33.745 311.562 448.438 11.261 36 .000 Results of the t-test shows that the difference in the means of pair 2 was not statistically significant, hence the differences in the response time for the word-naming is not due to the difference in congruency. This corroborates previous researches that shows that when a subject is required to read Stroop words, the ink color of the word does not impede the individual’s ability. Perhaps this can already be seen as a proof of the automaticity of reading words compared to colors. On the other hand, we can say that in the case of color-naming, congruency has a significant effect, perhaps because color processing and conflicts with the verbal codes associated with the printed word. Meanwhile, looking at the pairs 3 and 4, one can already see that there is a difference in the color-naming and word-naming tasks as the difference in the means of the two pairs are highly significant. This means that task definitely influences the Stroop effect. Discussion The Stroop effect predicts that the time required to name the ink color of an incongruent color word is relatively higher compared to the time required to name the color of a congruent color world. Moreover, word-naming of color words is easier because it does not impede reasoning (Mascolo & Hirtle, 1990). These findings are again replicated in the study we have just completed speaks of the universality of the Stroop effect. A study conducted by Michael Mascolo and Stephen Hirtle shows that there is a way to eliminate the Stroop effect. One way is by the introduction of tasks, which re-focuses the subject’s attention. Another method is by utilizing appropriate response input, for example, the use of color patches instead of labeled keys. These finding have significant effect on learning and education because it speaks of the methodologies used in class to instill lessons to students. The task scenario shows that if a student’s attention drifts in class, the he or she may miss out important details of the lecture. Hence, it is important for teachers to devise ways to capture the student’s attention, either through quizzes, readings, or other class activities. The automaticity of word processing presents another important point. First, words are part of a language, and language finds its meaning in culture. If the words in the Stroop trial were in foreign language, it is my belief that color processing will become so much easier. In a study by Joseph Tzelgov, Ziv Porat and Avishai Henik (1997) where they said, “the (automatic) relatedness effect is an example of intentional automatic processing, because reading of the prime word is part of the task’s requirements” (p.432). Without letters, it is almost impossible to “read” something – hence, the reason why color-naming is more difficult than word-naming. Yet, if the word (or letters) are in a different language, then the subject will also have difficult “reading” it. In a sense, the foreign word becomes an abstract concept, just like the colors. References Brown, T. L. (1996). Attentional selection and word processing in Stroop and word search tasks: The role of selection for action. The American Journal of Psychology, 109(2), 265-286. Jiang, Y., & Chun, M. M. (2000). Selective attention modulates implicit learning. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 5(A), 1-20. doi:10.1080/02724980042000516 Macleod, C. M., & Macdonald, P. A. (2000). Interdimensional interference in the Stroop effect?: uncovering the cognitive and neural anatomy of attention, 4(10), 383-391. Mascolo, M. F., & Hirtle, S. C. (1990). Verbal coding and the elimination of stroop interference in a matching task. The American Journal of Psychology, 103(2), 195-215. Pages, R. (n.d.). Executive Processes (pp. 280-324). Rueda, M. R., Rothbart, M. K., Mccandliss, B. D., Saccomanno, L., & Posner, M. I. (2005). Training , maturation , and genetic influences on the development of executive attention, 2-7. Tzelgov, J., Porat, Z., & Henik, A. (1997). Automaticity and consciousness: Is perceiving the word necessary for reading it? The American Journal of Psychology, 110(3), 429-448. Read More