Essay About Stroop Colour-Word Test And Stroop Colour

Stroop Colour – Word Test
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2002, vol. 32, no. 1 45
INTRODUCTION
The psychologists arsenal offers hundreds of psychodiagnostic
methods based on differences in origin,
orientation, age, etc. It is also obvious that while some
of them are highly objective, valid and reliable, others
– taking into account their psychometric features – are
not so worthy of inclusion. After a closer look at
psychodiagnostics, we are able to ascertain that together
with newly developed methods, psychologists
also use methods that originated some decades ago
(e.g. The Rorschach Inkblot Method). The presented
report is dedicated to a test that was introduced into
professional practice relatively long time (almost seventy
years) ago, but which could be, in our opinion,
ranked as a part of the limited “golden fund” of the
psychodiagnostic tools, the exceptional diagnostic and
scientific values of which cannot be denied.
STROOP COLOUR-WORD TEST
According to Daniel (1983) many researchers study
the influence of different psychosocial factors, burden
and stress on humans and the possibilities of how to
evoke (by means of appropriate psychological methods)
experimental stressful situations and assess the
degree of resistance of examined persons. This author
stresses the fact that in the field of perceptional stress,
the Stroop colour-word test is considered to be one of
the most suitable methods. Its components are subtests
of quick reading, identifying colours and interference.
When implementing the classic form of the Stroop
colour-word test, the subject is initially required to
read words representing names of some basic colours,
then he/she tries to quickly name the colours of, for
example, small rectangles and at the end he/she goes
through the so-called subtest of interference. The
subtest of interference is based on the assumption that
looking at the name of a colour which is other than
what the actual colour is (e.g. the word red is written
in green), the subject strongly tends to read the name
instead of saying the colour in which the word is written
(which is what the instruction requires). When
reading quickly, the person gets into a conflict-filled
stressful situation because the answer is influenced by
the learned reaction (in this case by the tendency to
read words, not to name the colours).
It can be said that the classic form of the Stroop
colour-word test was the most used variant for a long
time, even though new forms were gradually introduced
in practice. Houwer et al. (1994) suggest that at
present the dominant variant is probably the one where
the stimuli are pictures of common objects with a word
printed across. It is being realised that the time needed
to name the picture is longer if the word (distractor
word) represents a different object. According to
the mentioned authors, the success of the pictureword
variant is not difficult to explain: the colour and
word combination offers only a limited set of colours,
however the picture-word variant allows to choose out
of a great number of semantic categories and the
relationship between the picture and the word can be
determined with greater flexibility.
THE STROOP COLOUR-WORD TEST IN PSYCHOLOGY AND BIOMEDICINE
Emil Љiљka
Faculty of Physical Culture, Palackэ University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Submitted in December, 2001
The presented report is focused on the Stroop colour-word test. The test was first introduced into professional
practice almost seventy years ago and it became a part of the limited “golden fund” of psychodiagnostic tools.
The introduction outlines important studies based on research works on the different aspects of the method itself
(interference effect, validity, reliability, etc.) followed by detailed information on the use of the Stroop colour-word
test for research in human psychophysiological reactivity under experimental stress conditions. The conclusion is
a summary of the authors research, confirming that the Stroop colour-word test is an important experimental
stressor and that during its administration, the subjects showed evident changes in the autonomic modulation of
heart rate (predominance of sympathetic activity over parasympathetic). These changes can be monitored by
spectral analysis of heart rate variability.