The Stroop Effect began as a dissertation for John Ridley Stroop. This experiment originates in 1885 in work done by J.M. Cattel. He stated that colors and objects took longer to name the word. Both experimenters were interested to know what caused the interference was between conflicting processes. Once he made his research, Stroop wanted to explain the interference. His study was based on 2 major questions. What effect each of the dimension stimulus would have trying to name the other dimension? Would practice have an effect on the interference? He created 3 experiments. Experiment #1 studied the effect of different ink color on reading words aloud. The results of this experiment was that participants averaged 2.3 seconds longer to read the words with the incompatible ink color. On experiment #2 the task was changed to naming the ink color of the words aloud. This time it was the same order as in the first experiment but te shapes where substituted for words. The results Ridley Stroop got out of this experiment was that the participants averaged 47 seconds longer to name the ink color of incompatible words than to name the solid-colored shapes. On experiment #3, 32 participant were supposed to practice and name the ink color of incongruent words for 8 days. Ridley Stroop wanted to find out whether practice affected the results. The results for this experiment was that time on incompatible words decreased with practice. The conclusions were that practice did make a difference. Also, he concluded that naming words activated a single reading response, while colors activated more responses. Naming colors was much more difficult that reading them in words. The Stroop Effect is a difficulty or interference when naming the color of an object when the color interferes with the name of the object. The Stroop Effect also states that participants have a difficulty eliminated any irrelevant information during a task. There is a variation in the Stroop Effect and it is that it may be tested through various experiments. it has been manipulated in various ways by experimenters. There has been many variations since Ridley’s findings. Other people that have influenced the Stroop Effect are MacLeond, Hamers, Regan, Arnoult, McCown, Eriksen and Seymour. There are many limitations for these critical trials. For example, acoustic relations can alter the results. Also, the interference begins until around 2nd grade and declines through adulthood until around 60 and then rises again. It is also more powerful in the dominant language of bilinguals. The explanations for these findings are that words are that words are read faster than colors are named. Two responses compete to be the response that is produced. We automatically read a word when it is there for us to read and colors are everywhere and we do not necessarily say the color in our head every time we see a different color. in conclusion, this interference found when incongruent data is together makes it more challenging for us.
