Testing the Stroop Effect - Research Paper Example

? Testing the Stroop Effect Introduction The human mind is known to be able to process information in an automatic way. Instead of addressing the specifics of information, the mind is able to recognise certain bits of information even without having to processes the information in a specific way. A good example is the eye which in most cases only scans the general information in the environment. This is why it is possible for an individual to create an illusion of something that is not there in real sense. One of the oldest experiments which was designed to demonstrate this was the experiment by psychologist John Ridley Stroop who succeeded in showing how the brain processes information in a semiautomatic way. This has come to be called the Stroop effect. The Stroop effect is a psychological phenomenon which was first discussed by the psychologist John Ridley Stroop, in 1935. According to him, the reaction time of a person’s action is interfered with depending on different stimuli available. Stroop conducted the experiments which were designed to determine how the mind of a person works, especially when processing information. The first experiment required the participants to read the work regardless of the colour of the font used to write it. For instance, if a word was RED, the reader was supposed to read the word as red even if it was written in green font. This was supposed to test how congruence affected the person in being able to process the word. The second experiment was actually the opposite of this and this meant that the participants were to say the colour of the letters regardless of the word. For instance, if a the word red was written in blue, the participants would have to say the colour blue and not red. The third experiment, the participants at different levels were required to mention the colour of some various dots made on different colours. In this experiment, Stroop found that the participants were much able to recognise the words which were written in the same colour that denoted the word (Schmidt, 2007). However, the most interesting thing was that the participants were much able to detect the colours of the dots faster than when they were supposed to say the words written in the same colour as denoting the word. This was explained by the fact that while reading the words, the individual has to not only read the word but also to try and associate the colour in which the word was written and the actual word, a process which is not automated in the brain. Other studies have since been carried out in the attempt to understand the way the mind processes information. One such study was a study carried out in Oxford University where researchers tried to determine how the mind processes words. In this study, the researchers were able to prove that the orientation of the letters in a word did not affect the minds ability to recognise the word, as long as the first and the last letter of the words remain in their position as they would if the word was correctly spelled. Researchers have also been able to determine that there are some words which the mind does not process, such as the word of. For instance, readers were asked to read a sentence with the word of appearing at least five times. They were then asked to read the same sentence again and this time asked to count the number of tomes the word of appears in the sentence. Most of the readers were only able to recognise few of these words. This is because as the person reads the sentence, the brain does not really process the word ‘of’ and only hovers over it as it jumps to the next word. Current Study In this study, the aim was to seen how congruence and orientation affects a persons response time when processing visual information. In this regard, the experiment used both congruent words which mean that these words and the colours used to print them were congruent. At the same time, the test used words in which letters in a word were rearranged, only keeping the first and last letters of the word intact (unchanged). Faunally, the participants were required to read incongruent words which with disoriented spelling. Hypothesis A) The incongruent trial of the Stoop test will take significantly longer to complete than the congruent trial, regardless of test orientation. (There will be a major effect for Congruence.) B) There will be a significant interaction between Congruence and Orientation, such that Congruence will have a greater effect with Forward words than it will with Backwards words. Results Method The study used a sample of 16 participants, of whom twelve were females and four were males. This sample was convenience sample of students who were either in their early twenties or late teens. There was an advantage of using this sample as it provided a cohort of people whose minds were at their best in terms of performance. This was necessary as it would provide the best minds ion which to test the theory. The study was done in an easy way and the only materials needed were stationery for printing the words. The participants were asked to read the words, both incongruent and congruent words. After that, the participants were asked to read disoriented words. Finally, the participants were asked to read words which were both incongruent and disoriented as a way to determine whether the orientation had any effect when used together with incongruence. Discussion The results indicated very important phenomena with regard to the way people process information. It was very clear that the participants were able to identify the words even when the word’s spelling was disoriented from the normal spelling. The significant of the study can be seen in how the second hypothesis was indicated in the results. The first hypothesis postulated that the participants would be able to respond faster to congruent words than to the incongruent words. And just as the hypothesis postulated, the participants were much able to recognise words which were written in the same colour denoting the meaning of the word. However, the second hypotheses, postulated that that there will be a significant link between the congruence and the orientation. It is this part of the hypothesis which was very significant because it was very clear that congruence was more important than the orientation. The participants were much able to response to words in a faster way to the congruent words regardless of the fact that the orientation of the letters in the words was changed from the normal spelling arrangement. This was very significant because it indicated that there is a very different way in which the mind interacts with visual information. Limitation of the Study Although the results showed that orientation did not affect the participants’ ability to recognise the words as long as there was congruence between the words and the colour used to write it, there was no enough evidence to indicate why this was. There is a high possibility that the reason hat this happened was because of mastery by the students achieved through the repeated reading. Future studies should able to look at this and be able to identify the important factors. Future studies should also be able to look at more advanced ways of testing the theory. This would help in developing better ways to applying the theory in social situations such as in education. Bibliography Schmidt, J. (2007). The Stroop Effect: Why Proportion Congruent Has Nothing to Do with Congruency and Everything to Do with Contingency. New York, NY: ProQuest. Read More