As quick as you can say out loud the colour of every word - but NOT the word you read!
Ignore the word, just say the colour of the ink.
(right click to download image if it is not visible)
How did you do? Any problems?
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The Stroop Effect
This is a famous test in cognitive psychology called the Stroop task (named after the psychologist John Stroop who first studied it).
The fact you were slowed down – or made errors – while trying not to let the meaning of the words interfere with your ability to say out loud the colours - is called the Stroop Effect.
In the first two lines, there should have been no problem in naming the colours - because the meaning of the words and the colours match. But in the next lines, the meaning of the words and the colours are a mismatch – there is a conflict and this causes the problem, slowing you down and causing errors.
IQ Insight
What explains the Stroop effect? The effect can be explained by theconflict between two types of information processing:
- a type of information processing that is natural and automatic -reading the words: something you have done countless times.
- a type of information processing that requires deliberate selective attention to unusual information that you have been instructed to process (naming the colours), while suppressing/ignoring the natural interference from your automatic, well learned response to the word meaning.
The ability to flexibly attend to different aspects of our world in ways that are not routine or automatic is at the heart of our fluid intelligence. You cannot use your fluid intelligence on autopilot. And there is good evidence that your fluid intelligence is closely related to your ability to stay on track in a task or while pursuing a goal - and not to get distracted by interfering information or automatic modes of thinking or behaving that don’t help you attain your goal.
Our High IQ Pro® software helps train fluid intelligence, and because of this it helps with task focus and ignoring distraction and there is scientific evidence that it improves performance on this Stoop brain twister.
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