The Stroop Effect Mind Game

Try and try and keep trying. NAME the COLOR aloud that you see, NOT the words that you are reading. ATTENTION: The COLOR of the words is different from what words say. Play this game over and over. Reaction time suppose to be high in the early stages, it will show improved reaction times and errors by replaying.

Green	Yellow	Cyan	Red	Brown
Cyan	Red	Green	Brown	Yellow
Red	Brown	Green	Cyan	Yellow
Brown	Green	Cyan	Yellow	Red
Green	Yellow	Red	Cyan	Brown
Green	Red	Brown	Yellow	Cyan
Cyan	Brown	Yellow	Red	Green
Brown	Red	Yellow	Brown	Cyan

 
     Since our brain doesn’t have enough inhibition to surprise the wrong answer, we will let the wrong answer to slip through impulsively without even waiting for the right answer to come through. It is very effective mind game called “The Stroop Effect”. It was first reported by John Ridley Stroop in his Ph.D. thesis that was published in 1935. This test is very effective for neuropsychological evaluations that can measure mental vitality. It requires some executive functions such as self-regulation capability, strong attention, and inhibition. 

     Lets put some time thinking about what is happening behind the scene. It is very easy to recognize the actual color of the word when the meaning of the word and it's color is congruent. Congruent is when the word “GREEN” is written in green color. On the other hand, it will be very conflicting between the color and the meaning of the word when they are incongruent, which means the word “GREEN” is written in yellow color. This conflict arises between two vital brain processes, named “Word-recognition” and “Color-recognition”. Every human is naturally born faster word recognizer and relatively slow color recognizer. We recognize the meaning of the word way faster than the color. Every time we look at one of the blocks in the game, these two brain processes compete for each other to get to the final decision-making process. Since we are faster word recognizer, our brain has to inhibit the word-recognition process in order to allow the color-recognition to the final response.  

     Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) is a unique neuropsychiatric syndrome commonly related to the pediatric population. ADHD is characterized by locomotor hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The Stroop Test is vastly used empirically as an aid in the diagnosis of ADHD.