Abstract
In classic Stroop interference, manual or oral identification of sensory colors presented as incongruent color words is delayed relative to simple color naming. In the experiment reported here, this effect was shown to all but disappear when the response was simply to point to a matching patch of color. Conversely, strong reverse Stroop interference occurred with the pointing task. That is, when the sensory color of a color word was incongruent with that word, responses to color words were delayed by an average of 69 msec relative to a word presented in gray. Thus, incongruently colored words interfere strongly with pointing to a color patch named by the words, but little interference from incongruent color words is found when the goal is to match the color of the word. These results suggest that Stroop effects arise from response compatibility of irrelevant information rather than automatic processing or habit strength.
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This work was supported by a Swarthmore Faculty Research Grant and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. I thank Evoni Story and Richa Jain for running the experimental subjects. I also thank Derek Besner, John Flowers, Joel Lachter, Neill Trammell, John Wixted, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
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Durgin, F.H. The reverse Stroop effect. Psychon Bull Rev 7, 121–125 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210730
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210730