The Stroop Effect

EMOTIONAL DILUTION OF THE STROOP EFFECT

The Stroop Effect is a robust phenomenon that has continued to fascinate and inspire researchers in the area of selective attention. The original study that led to the discovery of the Stroop effect was conducted by J. Ridley Stroop in 1935 in order to understand the effect of interference upon serial verbal reactions. Stroop conducted a series of three experiments which involved colour naming and colour-word reading as the two tasks. The two stimuli- a colour word and a colour itself- were simultaneously presented, in an attempt to compare the interference of the colour itself in reading the colour word to that of the colour word on naming the colour. The delay in reaction time to read a colour word

His apparatus was a chart with hundred individual stimuli which however, were timed and mesured collectively. In order to overcome the list-structure effects that could be arising in the standard Stroop task, the need to present and time individual stimuli was felt. The resulting variation was critical in enhancing the accuracy of results. This further led to studies where the colour and word stimuli were separated and a fixation point was used between the two, creating stronger and more controlled procedures. (eg. Dyer, 1973). Most of these studies have findings that concur with Stroop’s to a large

Also, this phenomenon lends a background for the current experiment. It suggests that an emotionally arousing colour-word unit elicits a slower colour naming response than a neutral colour-word unit. “Slowing of naming the ink colour of emotional as compared to neutral words represents the emotional interference effect and indicates biasing of attentional resources towards the emotionally salient information.” (Dresler, Mériau, Heekeren, & Van Der Meer, 2009). In a study conducted by Dresler et al (2009), subjects were shown emotionally arousing and emotionally neutral words printed in four different colours, their task being colour-naming of each word. They were also tested on surprise free recall and recogniton of the words earlier presented to