Colorific!

1. Colorific! Here is a fun trick to play on your brain. Use red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, and brown to neatly color each of these color names; however, do not color them with the correct colors. For example, do not color the word red with red. When you are done, try to say the colors of the words as fast as you can. Do not read the words, just say the colors. Can you do it? Why do you think it is so hard to say the color names?

2. RED YELLOW PURPLE GREEN ORANGE BLUE PURPLE BROWN ORANGE GREEN

3. Why do you think it is so hard to say the color names? The Stroop Effect The Stroop effect deals with the time it takes to name the color of printed words. When you try to name the color in which color words are printed, it takes longer when the color word differs from the ink color than when the color word is the same as the ink color.

4. Why? The naming of the colors was much harder than you would think, right? You may even have felt like you were fighting back an urge to read the color word out loud, rather than naming the color of the letters. This phenomenon was described in 1935 in a now-famous paper by John Ridley Stroop, and is known in experimental psychology as the Stroop effect. One explanation for the Stroop effect is called interference. From the earliest years of school, reading is a task that people practice every day. We become so good at it that we read words automatically. When we are asked to name the color of the word instead of reading the word, somehow the automatic reading of the word interferes with naming the color of the word. Our understanding of the written word interferes with our ability to separate one task from another. The cognitive mechanism involved in this task is called directed attention, you have to manage your attention, inhibit or stop one response in order to say or do something else. 

5. Our Brain The task of making an appropriate response -- when given two conflicting signals -- has tentatively been located in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate. This is a region that lies between the right and left halves of the frontal portion of the brain. It is involved in a wide range of thought processes and emotional responses. Although the functions of the anterior cingulate are very complex, broadly speaking it acts as a messanger between lower, somewhat more impulse-driven brain regions and higher, somewhat more thought-driven behaviors. The Stroop effect's sensitivity to changes in brain function may be related to its association with the anterior cingulate.

6. Test Your Brain http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/exposure/braintest.html Another Version of the Stroop Test http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/exposure/stroopintro.html