Abstract
The stoop effect is a phenomenon in which you say the color of the word and not the name. IT deals with cognition and reaction time. For instance, purple may be printed in red and the color of the word is said rather than the name. The emotional Stoop test works by inspecting the reaction time of the participant to name colors of negative emotional words. The emotional stoop appears to get the attention of the person and slows response time due to the emotional relevance of the word to the person. Responses in both the stoop test and emotional stoop test are suppressed due to distracting word information while attention on the color of the word is maintained. The Reaction time to naming colors when the words relate to negative emotions is greater. The finding that the reaction time increases when asked to name the color of ink a word is printed in rather than the name of the competing printed color.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Introduction
The stoop effect theory was termed during the 1930s for the first time by a psychologist named John Ridley Stoop for whom the test is titled after. The stoop effect has been elaborated by two conflicting approaches which are the perceptual conflict and response competition. According to Spreen and Strauss (1991), perceptual conflict refers to overloading of a person’s processing capacity with irrelevant Information and relevant incongruent color hence delay of entire processing time. The latter poses a situation where two competing reactions use a sole comeback channel. People tend to take more time to make out the color or the word especially if it is different with what it describes. That delayed reaction when the color of the word does not match the name is what describes the stoop effect.
According to Macleod (1992), people find it easy to say the color of the word when the word matches the color. The test reveals the effect that interference brings about when it comes to reaction time. color provocation necessitates alteration from a perceptual to a verbal code this kind of transformation is not essential for word stimulus.as a result, extraneous word information reaches the response initiation stage earlier than the relevant color information, causing interference. Although the Emotional Stoop test and the classic Stoop effect have related developmental aftermaths the also have variations.
In the stoop test a person encounters a conflict between an incongruent color and word but in the emotional stoop, the message implied in the word affects the emotions.in psychology, the emotion stoop is used in assessing emotions of a person. The emotional stoop test is applied in clinical studies by using emotional words in the affected person area of concern.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Studies on stoop test.
The selective theory
Information from all kind of stimuli at any time enters the sensory buffer. On the basis of physical characteristics, one of the inputs is selected for processing by passing through a filter. Human beings capable of processing information are limited hence the filter usually prevents excessive information to avoid overloading. Initially, three are inputs which are not selected by the filter, these inputs remain in the sensory buffer for a while and if they are not processed they decay. Broadbent made an assumption that the unattended at the early stages of processing was rejected. People focus their attention selectively because too much information cannot be processed at the same time.
Automaticity
Automaticity is of great significance for reads to become wholly proficient and fluent. Automaticity implies recognizing information and processing it without thinking on conscience grounds. Automaticity is not inborn instead human beings develop it as they try to learn. An automatic reader looks at words and understands what they mean subconsciously. They don’t give much attention to the words to absorb their meanings. Automaticity can be developed in early ages with patience .it requires a high degree of practice to be incorporated in the human being memory. The goodness of automaticity is that once one has taken time to learn it, it is not easily forgotten in the later times
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
The speed of processing theory
Researchers established that variety of cognitive abilities like processing speed, memory, and problem-solving decline with an increase in age. As Birren theorized, cognitive decline that results as people begin to age results to slowing an individual’s processing speed. This can be practically seen by studying the functional abilities of the aged. Cognitive training can be done to enhance or sustain cognitive abilities either in young or old people.
The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of the stoop test and the emotional stoop test and find out whether verbal fluency has a correlation with the stoop effects .people who read fluently are expected to be faster in reading although they experience huge stoop interference. Three experiments were carried out which were the stoop, congruent and incongruent and emotions which are either positive or negative conditions .creation of a conflict between an incongruent color and word is expected in the stoop test. Both the stoop test and the emotional stoop test grants a need to suppress reactions to distracting word information while maintaining attention on the color of the word to complete information. The experiment was carried out in the pair of two people. The experiment required participants to name the color of words and the word gave a clue of the color. Each member in a pair was timed for 60 seconds using a stopwatch.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Hypothesis
1.The aim of the experiment was to test the stoop effect by inspecting whether the time taken to identify the names of colors when the words related negative emotions was greater than the response time to naming colors when the words related to positive or no emotion at all.
2. To determine whether naming colors when the words and Arial colors matched acquired a less response time than naming colors which the words and font colors did not match.
3. To find out whether cases, where the verbal fluency was high, had a great stoop effect.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Materials, Methods, and Procedures
The experiment was carried out by 16 females and 5 males.
Materials
1. A stopwatch
2.21 pieces of plain paper
The stoop test
All the participants were presented with a copy of a printed paper contain a sentence which read ‘I will cross the road when the signs turn black.’
‘The sky is blue’
A Stopwatch was used by the members for timing purposes.
The Emotional Stoop test
All the members in the pairs were presented with printed papers. The papers had different kinds of statements which were positive, negative and neutral ones.
I cry and sob when I remember the death of my mum. (Negative statement)
The clock is on the wall. (Neutral statement)
I scored remarkably in the last exam. (Positive statement)
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Phonemic Fluency Test
Participants were to produce as many words as possible from a category within 60 seconds. They were to produce words beginning with the letter F, A and S. The words were written down.
Semantic Fluency Test
Participants named animals, fruits, and drinks within 60 seconds. They took turns to name the items whereby one participant named the items.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Results and data analysis
The participants studied response time by means of the emotional Stoop task while cautiously corresponding arousal extent of positive, negative and neutral words. Emotional in relation to neutral words elicited emotional interference independent of valence. This was a clear indication that arousal determines emotional interference. Positive and negative words were easily remembered and recognized than neutral words, independent of valence. Dissimilarities in state and anxiety were linked with emotional intrusion in that emotional interference was high in subjects with high anxiety. Trait anxiety was not influenced.
Members of the groups displayed different kinds of reactions. The positive statement took a long time to be read while most finished reading the negative statement at a fast rate. Negative sentences are difficult to process than positive ones. The members read negative sentences the sentences then started to think. Fast readers were slow in reading negative sentences.in the early stages the negation of the sentences id ignored by the mind but after reading one starts to process. The mind tries to gauge the true value.
Most members of the groups posed for some time before they finished the reading. The participants in pairs timed one another as they took turns to read. For some members, time was up before they finished reading. Color naming interferes with the printed word. The response time when the color matched with the words was fast but the response time when the colors did not match the words were long. In the congruent condition, the word matches a color.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Participants relied on a focused reading process to yield fast and exact reacting. in the incongruent condition accurate reacting requires participants to use cognitive contrivances in order to produce accurate results. The time the participants took to think the name of the color in the incongruent in relation to the congruent condition is what is referred to as stoop interference. This idea that there are two discrete levels of control may be false nevertheless; these mechanisms broadly have been disclosed in autonomous lines of investigation.
As training, subjects performed the classical Stoop task prior to the experiment. The classical Stoop task consisted of two blocks: during the first block 60 congruent items (12 practice trials, 48 test trials, e.g. the word “red” written in red color) and during the second block 48 incongruent items (e.g. the word “red” written in blue color) were displayed.
The experiment entailed two runs and each run contained four blocks of neutral, positive and negative words. The blocks were arranged in a 123213 fashion (1 = neutral, 2 = positive, 3 = negative) to avoid sequential demonstration of blocks of the same valence. Within each block, ten trials were put. The arrangement of trials was randomized to avoid a situation where successive trials would cause a similar manual reaction. Overlay, the subjects had 70 negative, 70 positive, and 70 neutral words. The participants tried to remember and identify the words. In the disclosure, re-call task participants wrote all the words they remembered. All the 60-word stimuli from the experiment were replaced with other words and subjects were presented with the words (e.g. eat vs. beat).
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Presentation of word pairs was pseudo-randomized, as was the screen position (top or bottom) of the target word. Distractor items were matched with target items in terms of valence and grammatical category. To completion and then gave a chance to the other. The item names were written on paper. Some members were very fast in responding while some were slow. The most conjoint act measure is the aggregate number of words. Additions like figure repetitions, amount and size of collections of words from the same semantic or phonetic subsection can be conceded out.
| Mean | Std. Deviation | N | |
| Stroop effect | 23.2305 | 9.18347 | 21 |
| Verbal fluency | 107.7619 | 17.37212 | 21 |
| Phonemic fluency | 47.1429 | 8.35036 | 21 |
| Semantic fluency | 60.6190 | 12.06017 | 21 |
| Stroop effect | Verbal fluency | Phonemic fluency | Semantic fluency | ||
| Stroop effect | Pearson Correlation | 1 | -.214 | -.191 | -.176 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .352 | .408 | .445 | ||
| N | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | |
| Verbal fluency | Pearson Correlation | -.214 | 1 | .779** | .901** |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .352 | .000 | .000 | ||
| N | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | |
| Phonemic fluency | Pearson Correlation | -.191 | .779** | 1 | .430 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .408 | .000 | .052 | ||
| N | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | |
| Sematicfluency | Pearson Correlation | -.176 | .901** | .430 | 1 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .445 | .000 | .052 | ||
| N | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | |
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Discussion
This study aimed to determine whether a memory is affected by categorical clustering. Reports of students in this sample showed that they retained more information when they used chunking to categorize information than when they did not. In his study in 1886 Cattell suggests that word reading become easier or even automatic with extensive practice. Results concerning the emotional Stoop effect in subjects may be clarified by understanding the effects of provocation valence and arousal along with specific dissimilarities in apprehension. The results meant that word arousal gave rise to emotional interference autonomous of valence. State anxiety intensifies intervention of emotive words by biasing attention towards emotionally striking stimuli. MacLeod and Rutherford (1992) suggest that color naming interferes with anxiety and traits of a person. According to (Ruff, Light, Parker and Levin, 1997) word generation is related to measures of vocabulary, auditory attention and articulation speed. The present study found gender differences in numerical memory in favor of women. These results are inconsistent with prior research (Robertson et al., 2001; Sylvester & Nelson, 1990).
Problems encountered during the study
There was the issue of internal validity which included factors related to the study design, measurement, and statistical power. Threats to external validity like population, ecological, temporal and outcome validity lead to sample bias and particular features of the sample that limit generalization of findings. Measurement validity was a problem because this was a cross-sectional research design that relied on survey data.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
Conclusion
From the results, we establish that the emotional Stoop effect was greater than the emotional delay with word reading. All the hypotheses were answered in this experiment. All the effects were noted it was ensured that nothing was overlooked. Efforts should be made to clearly and broadly determine characteristics of stimuli. Although research on Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency faces a more challenging path ahead it offers many exciting opportunities for future research in the current scientific world .more findings are expected in the future due to the many unproven theories and the broadness of the topic.A greater input can be made by evolving tasks that bring about robust effects. Hopefully, the results of the experiment will inspire more in psychology.
Implications
The experimental words took extensive time to complete followed by the control list of words. This has inferences for the staging of materials to people, as it will have to be well thought out before presented certain things to different people.it also had inferences on individual differences, for instance, people doing brain training games.it will depend on people because some will find it easier while others will find it hard.
Stoop effects and Verbal Fluency
References.
Comalli Jr, P. E., Wapner, S., & Werner, H. (1962). Interference effects of Stroop color-word test in childhood, adulthood, and aging. The Journal of genetic psychology, 100(1), 47-53.
Hock, C., Villringer, K., Müller-Spahn, F., Wenzel, R., Heekeren, H., Schuh-Hofer, S., … & Villringer, A. (1997). Decrease in parietal cerebral hemoglobin oxygenation during performance of a verbal fluency task in patients with Alzheimer’s disease monitored by means of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)—correlation with simultaneous rCBF-PET measurements. Brain research, 755(2), 293-303.
Williams, J. M. G., Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (1996). The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin, 120(1), 3.
Appendices
1.The Stoop test
2. The Emotional Stoop test
Negative, positive and normal sentences were used
I cry and sob when I remember the death of my mum. (Negative statement)
The clock is on the wall. (Positive statement)
I scored remarkably in the last exam. (Normal statement)
3.Phonemic Fluency Test
Animal fruits and drinks were used by the participants.
4.Semantic Fluency Test
Letter F and A and S were used by the participants.
