Stroop test
A color word appears. Tap the color of the ink, not the word. There are 24 words. Half are printed in their own color and half are not.
| Matching words, average | – |
|---|---|
| Mismatched words, average | – |
| Difference | – |
| Wrong answers | – |
| Your best mismatched average on this device | Not yet played |
This test needs color vision. If you cannot tell red from green, the result will not mean much.
What this measures
Reading is so practiced that you read the word before you can stop yourself. When the word and the ink disagree, you have to hold back the word to name the color, and that takes time. The slowdown is called the Stroop effect, after J. R. Stroop, who described it in 1935.1
Psychologists use the task to test how well a person can hold back an automatic response. In the research this is called inhibiting cognitive interference.2
It measures one narrow thing. A small difference is not a high IQ, and a large one is not a low one.
What is a typical result?
The effect is one of the most studied in psychology. A 1991 review covered half a century of experiments on it.3
How big the slowdown is depends on the version of the test. A 2017 review found that studies differ in the conditions they use and in how they score them, so there is no single normal figure to compare with.2
Compare your difference with your own earlier runs on the same device.
Why the difference matters more than the times
A web page records every tap a little late. That delay is much the same on every tap, so it adds to both averages and mostly drops out of the difference between them. Why times measured on a web page run slow.
What practice does
Play this a few times and the difference will probably shrink. That is practice at this one task. A 2016 review of the research found that brain training improves performance on the tasks that are trained, with little evidence that it carries over to everyday thinking.4
Sources
- Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643–662. doi.org/10.1037/h0054651
- Scarpina, F., and Tagini, S. (2017). The Stroop Color and Word Test. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 557. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00557
- MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 109(2), 163–203. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.109.2.163
- Simons, D. J., et al. (2016). Do "brain-training" programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103–186. doi.org/10.1177/1529100616661983
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