Internal Assessment - The Stroop Effect

The Stroop Effect is an experiment that was carried out by John Ridley Stroop in 1935. He did this experiment to understand human being’s mental processes. The Stroop experiment is portrays a psychological test of our mental vitality and flexibility. The task consists in taking advantage of the participant’s ability to read words shaded in different colors. Stroop showed in his experiment that people consider reading the word of the color easier rather than saying the color used as a shade in the word. The cognitive mechanism, after all is called direct attention in which one has to manage his or her attention, and stop one’s response in order to say another thing. This experiment as a whole emphasizes the interference that automatic processing of words has on the mental effort taking task of naming the colors. The experiment is said to produce activity in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulated. This part of the brain is just in between the right and the left halves of the brain of the frontal portion of the brain. This part of the brain concentrates on thought processes and emotional responses. The Stroop effect’s sensitivity to changes in brain functions are said to have much to do with the anterior cingulated. The effect this experiment has had on others is the fact that it can be concluded by the results shown that it is much harder than it sounds to respond correctly to tricks done to our minds. The experiment involves the experimenter to hand the participant or participants a paper in which the names of various colors are written but the trick lies in the fact that the words are shaded in a different color as to the one it says. For example, if the word is orange, the word will definitely be shaded in blue or whichever color, except orange. An interesting fact on this experiment is the fact that results cannot be improved by training. The brain cannot be trained to allow certain of its areas to dominate others. Results show that verbal activity can reduce the depth of hypnotic trance and that the functional area of the brain that is most of the time dominant is responsible for language function and critical rejection of suggestion. In the end, one can conclude that the brain has limited attention resources that only one function area of our brain can spark our behavior at a time and this most certainly will inhibit the other areas.