Analytical Essay on Stroop Effect: Experiment on Reaction Time of Kids

Rationale

My pilot study is going to be based on the Stroop effect. This test is to test is to see how well it works on kids and to see their reaction time. The Stroop effect was discovered by John Ridley Stroop in 1935. John Stroop found out that when a name of a colour is written in a different ink colour people take time to guess what colour is it. In other words, the Stroop effect is the delay in reaction time between congruent and incongruent stimuli. This experiment has been used to create tests mainly used in clinical practice and investigation.

Introduction

In my study, I have seen that the Stroop effect has been used in many different ways and that the development of more advanced technology has also helped to make the experiment more accurate and faster compared to old studies. Reading is an automatic process compared to recognising colour which is a controlled process.

I have asked a school to allow me to conduct a study on kids to see their reaction time on the congruent and incongruent stimuli. I have asked the school to pick out 10 random students from ages 7 to 10. It will be 5 boys and 5 girls. These students will read the words and the teachers will time their responses. They will also read the colour (not the word). I will also gain consent from their parents because I can’t do it without their consent. I will conduct 1 to 1 sessions with each student with parent and teacher to tell them what is going on and what they need to do in depth.

My hypothesis prediction is that it will take longer to realise the colour of the word.

Method

Experiment will be using 10 students aged 7-10. They will all be in the same group for both congruent and incongruent sessions. They will have a break session between congruent and incongruent sessions. The method I will be using is reaction time response. So I will see how long it takes for the students to respond to the colour of the word than the name for example: having the word green but in blue ink. I will also have stopwatches assigned to each parentteacher to monitor and see how long it takes for the students to react.

Design

All participants will be the same and will go through the same procedure. They will both read the words (red, green, blue, etc) and the colour (not the word) and their responses will be timed. The independent variable were the colour of the words and the dependant was the response time( in seconds) and the control variables will be the size and the font of the colour in the background.

Participants

10 students randomly recruited from a primary school and have different age ranges. 2 students age 7 (1 male and 1 female) 3 students age 8 (2 females and 1 male) 1 students age 9 (1 male and 1 female) 3 students age 10 (2 male and 1 female)

Resources

To meet my objective to start my study the resources were:

• • 10 participants aged 7-10, 5 males and 5 females
• • Materials: paper, pc computer, printer
• • Stopwatch
• • A room to carry out the study.

Procedure

I printed out 50 papers (10 for each student). I gained permission from the school. Recruited 10 participants randomly from different classrooms at 09:00. I explained the experiment and got consent from the participants before starting at 09:30. All students were asked to read the colour of the letters printed on the sheets and were asked to read the colour of the words on the sheets. Their reaction times were taken and measured by a stopwatch. They had a 10 minute break between the congruent and incongruent parts. Experiment ended at 10:15. Results were later calculated.

Results

Table 1-Results from the font colours which correspond to the word to see the reaction time.

Table 2- results from the font colours not corresponding the word to see the reaction time.

Mean from table 1

6.45 6.82 6.55 5.76 6.09 7.23 5.45 6.92 5.83 6.09 =63.19 (divide by 10)

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MEAN = 6.319 seconds

Mean from table 2

16.82 18.23 17.88 15.79 19.13 17.47 14.90 18.13 16.65 18.11 =173.11 (divide by 10)

MEAN = 17.311 seconds.

Median from table 1

6.45 6.82 6.55 5.76 6.09 7.23 5.45 6.92 5.83 6.09

MEDIAN = 6.66 seconds

Median from table 2

16.82 18.23 17.88 15.79 19.13 17.47 14.90 18.13 16.65 18.11

MEDIAN = 18.3 seconds

Conclusion

The data collected above shows a huge significance identifying that having coloured words impacts and interferes with the user processing the words and it impacts the reaction time. The students were significantly faster with the congruent stimuli compared to the incongruent stimuli which resulted in a much longer reaction time. This therefore supported my hypothesis that it actually takes longer to recognise the word in different ink.

To improve my Stroop effect study, I could conduct it on a larger scale and have people from different ages from lower and higher education like colleges and universities which could help improve results and make the study more reliable and can help support future research.

Discussion

Having conducted this pilot study and have seen what recourses and participants I have used. I would be much better to have a larger scale study to try out the experiment because as I said it will help improve my results and make it more reliable for example having more people from older ages like from colleges and universities. This study is very easy to design and use and to improve I could use different materials like having more technological materials to improve the efficiency of my results but this might be costly because its new technology. I’m glad that my hypothesis came out the way I wanted because it’s what I had expected it to be. The pilot study was successful and has also increased my knowledge about the Stroop effect and the research process and skills and has also shown room for improvement for a large scale study.