


 The present experiment is based on the study performed by psychologist
 J. Ridley Stroop in 1935.


 In Stroop's original experiment he showed people a list of color names that
 were printed in color in ink. Each color name was printed in a color 
 different from the color it named. For example, the word RED might be 
 printed in blue ink and the word blue in green ink. Seventy college
 students had to read a sesecond list printed in black ink. Stroop found
 little difference for the reading times for the two lists. Apparently,
 the students could largely ignore ink colour while reading.















 A second group of 100 students named the colours of the inks that the
 colour words were printed in and also named the colours of a list of
 colour patches. Stroop found that students required an average of 63
 seconds to identify colours on the colour patch list but an average of
 110 seconds to identify the ink colours on the word list. Apparently,
 the students could not avoid reading the words when they tried to name
 their ink colours, and the conflict between the name and the ink colour
 slowed down their responses. The conflict arises because when the person
 tries to say aloud the name of the ink colour, there are two colour names
 in consciousness. One is the ink colour, which is the correct response.
 The other is the word that is automatically read. Hence if the person does
 not have to make a verbal response but, rather, indicates in some other way
 what colour the ink is, the intereference is greately reduced (Dyer 1973;
 Flowers, Warner, and Polansky, 1979; Klein, 1964).















 Recent research has focused on using Stroop effect to study the relationship
 between automatically and consciously activated representations. Stroop-
 like interference has been demonstrated in a variety of tasks (Lupker, 1979;
 Smith and Magee, 1980; Lupker and Katz, 1981).

 [Adopted from COGNITION by A.L. Glass and K.J. Holyoak]



