Stroop Effect

due Thursday Feb 16 at the beginning of class

1. Read the background and instructions in the CogLab manual carefully so that you understand what the task is. Briefly, you will be shown words printed in different color ink. Your job is to name what the ink color is, not what the word is. So, if you were shown the following stimuli, the correct answer would be "red" since the ink color is red.

Blue

2. Print out your individual data and include it with your write up. The data will just be two reaction time averages (no graph). Describe the classic Stroop Effect Finding and indicate if your results are consistent or inconsistent with that classic finding.

3. Explain how the typical findings of the Stroop Effect can be explained by automatic processing (see intro paragraphs for the experiment). What does this generally tell us about how a non-automatic process interacts with an automatic process?

4. Based on this notion of automatic processing, how do you think a child, who knows his/her colors very well but who is still learning how to read, would perform in this experiment? (i.e. what would the data look like when comparing each separate condition and explain why).

5. How do you think the reaction times for adults would compare if a third condition were added that had non color words written in different color ink (e.g. Subjects would have to identify the ink color of non color words such as "Truck", "Book", "Candy", etc.)? Do you think people would be faster, slower, or equally fast compared to each of the original two conditions (ink & word same vs ink & word different) and justify your answer with what we know about this task and automatic processing.