Discuss the Stroop task. How do the results of this task relate to our everyday attentional processing? Propose a variation of a Stroop task, and discuss how you would carry out an experiment to test it.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Student examples will vary. A sample answer follows.
A Stroop task is a study that asks students to name the color of printed words. Participants almost always find it much easier to complete the task when the word "red" is red, the word "orange" is orange, and so on. If the word "red" is green, then participants take much longer to complete the task because the print color and the words don't match. That inconsistency means that automatic processes cannot take over. Instead, students must pay close attention.
The Stroop task proves that there are some everyday processes that become automatic to us, so we have to pay little attention to them. If we had to focus our full attention each time we walked, read in our native language, or identified colors, our attentional processing would be very different.
My Stroop task would focus on foods. I would present one set of words matched with photographs (the word "milk" with a picture of a carton of milk) and one set with non-matching photographs (the word "ketchup" with a picture of a carton of milk).