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The Stroop effect refers to the fact that it is very difficult to name the colour of ink in which colour words are written. This is reflected in how many more mistakes you made, and how much slower you were, on the color words compared with the colour blocks. In its most familiar form the task consists of a sequence of coloured words. The task of the participant is to speak the name of the colour in which each word is written. However, interference is introduced to this cognitive task by providing actual colour words as the stimuli. Thus for example the word **RED** will appear in green ink, and the subject is expected to say "green". Did you have trouble naming the color of the word when the word didn't match its color? The Stroop Effect is one of the strongest effects in experimental psychology, and it was first described by J.R. Stroop in 1935. If you try to name the physical color of a word, the word itself can "interfere" with the process of naming the color of the word. If the word and color don't match (incongruent), it often takes longer to name the color. If the word does match its color (congruent), it usually takes less time to respond. If you are like most people, your in congruent respo

=Neuroscience For Kids=

Colors, Colors
The famous "Stroop Effect" is named after J. Ridley Stroop who discovered this strange phenomenon in the 1930s. Here is your job: name the colors of the following words. Do NOT read the words...rather, say the color of the words. For example, if the word "BLUE" is printed in a red color, you should say "RED". Say the colors as fast as you can. It is not as easy as you might think!http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/words.html

Past research has demonstrated an age-related increase in the Stroop effect. Some theorists have suggested that this increase results from a decline in the ability to inhibit word information on incongruent trials, whereas others have suggested that the decline reflects general slowing. These two hypotheses were evaluated using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) measured while younger and older adults performed the Stroop task. As expected, the Stroop effect was greater for older than younger adults. The ERP data revealed a selective age-related attenuation of two modulations reflecting the inhibition of word information on incongruent trials. Latency of the P3 wave did not increase to a greater extend for older than younger adults from the congruent to incongruent trials as expected based on the general slowing hypothesis. Taken together, these findings support the inhibitory deficit hypothesis by demonstrating an age-related decline in a conceptual level inhibitory process that supports the suppression of word information in the Stroop task.nse times will be longer than you congruent response times.

Stroop (1935) noted that observers were slower to properly identify the color of ink when the ink was used to produce color names different from the color of the ink. That is, observers were slower to identify red ink when it spelled the word blue. This is an interesting finding because observers are told to not pay any attention to the word names and simply to report the color of the ink. However, this seems to be a nearly impossible task, as the name of the word seems to interfere with the observer's ability to report the color of the ink." (CogLab, 2007)

The Stroop Color-Word Test was administered to 1,856 cognitively screened, healthy Dutchspeaking participants aged 24 to 81 years. The effects of age, gender, and education on Stroop test performance were investigated to adequately stratify the normative data. The results showed that especially the speed-dependent Stroop scores (time to complete a subtest), rather than the accuracy measures (the errors made per Stroop subtask), were profoundly affected by the demographic variables. In addition to the main effects of the demographic variables, an Age Low Level of Education interaction was found for the Error III and the Stroop Interference scores. This suggests that executive function, as measured by the Stroop test, declines with age and that the decline is more pronounced in people with a low level of education. This is consistent with the reserve hypothesis of brain aging (i.e., that education generates reserve capacity against the damaging effects of aging on brain functions). Normative Stroop data were established using both a regression-based and traditional approach, and the appropriateness of both methods for generating normative data is discussed.
 * Key Words:** Stroop Color-Word Test • executive function • normative data • education • brain reserve

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