| Color to Key | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red | Green | Cancel | |||
| Yellow | Blue | ||||
Start the program by focusing on the text box and pressing the space bar. Stare at the dot on the screen. When the colored word appears, press the key corresponding to the color of the word, not what it says. If you get it wrong, you will be retested on it later in the trial.
If at any time you brainfreeze or are distracted by something during
the identification of the color, you can press the "Cancel"
key (default is x). The word will be shuffled back into
the trials and you'll encounter it later. (Minor caveat: if it's your
last trial, you'll simply be retested on it again and again until you
get it right. Just thought you might like to know.)
When there is a status message on the screen, the timer is stopped, and you can take a break, or view the instructions again. If there is a dot or a colored word, the timer will not stop if you skip to another place, like Instructions, so you will have to invalidate that trial.
You can edit the keys for the colors to something more comfortable.
Simply press the Edit button, and then modify the text fields as you see
fit, then press Set. Changes are not remembered.
The Stroop effect in psychology is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task. When a word such as blue, green, red, etc. is printed in a color differing from the color expressed by the word's semantic meaning (ie. the word red printed in blue ink), a delay occurs in the processing of the word's color, leading to slower test reaction times and an increase in mistakes. The effect is named after its discover, John Ridley Stroop, and was first noted in an article Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1935.
This section is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Stroop effect".