Abstract

These experiments were based on the Stroop effect with an identical design looking at interference in ink colour naming tasks. The experiments used the Regular and Emotions Stroop word sets where the experimental condition was the list of incongruent words and the control condition was the list of congruent words. All participants were timed as they read the list of words from either the Regular or Emotions Stroop stimulus card. The results from experiment 1: Regular Stroop indicated that the experimental condition response times were significantly higher in comparison to the control condition response times. As a result the hypothesis for experiment 1: Regular Stroop has been accepted and the null has been rejected. The results for experiment 2: Emotions Stroop indicated that there was no significant difference between the two conditions and as a result the bull hypothesis has been accepted and the hypothesis has been rejected. The results for experiment 1: Regular Stroop were: t(33) = 5.48, p<0.001, with n = 34 and the results for experiment 2: Emotions Stroop were: t(33) = 0.43, p=0.33ns, with n = 34. These results do support Stroop's (1935) and McCann's (1984 & 1987) theories.

Introduction

In Psychology, the Regular Stroop effect is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task and this effect was named after John Ridley Stroop who first made this discovery in 1935. (Eysenck, 2004). The Stroop effect has long been a trait of competition between cognitive processes, in which the automatic tendency to say the name of a colour word must be overridden in order to say its ink colour (congruent vs incongruent) (Gross, 2005). For example, when participants took a test of words printed in a colour differing from the colour articulated by the word's semantic meaning (incongruent), it is believed that a delay occurs in the processing of the word's colour leading to slower reaction times and an increase in mistakes made by subjects. In his original experiment, Stroop made use of different variations on two of his main tests, referred to as 'Reading Colour Names' (RCN) and 'Naming Colour Words' (NCW). During the RCN test, subjects repeated the written meaning of the words which differed in colours, and in the NCW the subjects repeated the colour of each printed colour name. Alongside this, Stroop tested each of his subjects at different intervals to take into account the effects of association. During the course of conducting these tests, Stroop noticed a great increase in the time taken by each subject to complete the NCW task, an effect which was still evident despite there being continued practice of each task by each subject (Davey et al, 2004). This interference is believed to be caused by the automation of reading, in which the mind automatically settles on the semantic meaning of a word, and then it must override its first impression with the identification of the colour of the word, which is somewhat challenging for the mind as this process is not automatic. This process is also known as automatic processing. Alongside the Regular Stroop test, the Emotional Stroop Test is used as an information-processing approach to assessing emotions and as it is adapted from the Regular Stroop test, it works by investigating the response time of participants in naming the colours of negative emotional words. An example of this would be clinically anxious participants who would be slower at naming the colour of a depressing word rather than a non-depressing word. Other participants also showed to be slower at naming emotional words e.g., envy, fire, rage etc., than naming neutral words e.g., hollow, dream, fun etc. (McCann, 1984 & 1987 cited in Gross, 2005). While both these tests draw out similar behavioural outcomes (a slowing in response times to colored words), these tests connect different method of interference (McKenna & Sharma, 2004 cited in Gross, 2004). The regular Stroop test creates a conflict between an incongruent colour and word e.g., the word 'RED' in font colour blue but the emotional Stroop involves only emotional and neutral words; colour does not affect the pace at which the word is read because it does not conflict with the meaning of the word. Therefore, studies have shown that the effects of slowing for emotional words compared to neutral are the same even if all the words are written in black ink which in turn indicates that the emotions Stroop does not involve an effect of conflict between a word meaning and a colour ink it is written in, but it does appear to capture the attention of participants and slow down their response time due to the emotional relevance of the word for the individual. Both the regular and the emotions Stroop tests, however, involve the need to suppress responses to distracting word information, while selectively maintaining attention on the colour of the word to complete the task. (Compton et al, 2003).
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The report aims to conduct an experiment using the Regular and Emotions Stroop to see if the time taken to read incongruent words was higher or if reading congruent words was higher.

Experiment one: Regular Stroop

H1 : The Experimental condition reaction times will be higher than the reaction times of the control condition.

H0 : The Experimental condition reaction times will not be higher than the reaction times control condition.

Experiment two: Emotional Stroop

H1 : The Experimental condition reaction times will be higher than the reaction times of the control ...

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