Introduction
is a way of measuring how automatic or
intentional some well practised tasks are and how we respond in conflict
situations. This phenomenon also measures individual distinctions,
originality and cognitive flexibility. The two aspects of cognitive
development that are demonstrated by the stroop task are naming response
and counting response. When two responses compete or are in conflict, the
time required to make the correct decision is dependent on speed and
accuracy.

In the article "Tracing The Time Course of Picture Word Processing",
by M.C. Smith and L.E. Magee; these two researchers found that picture
naming was affected by the presence of incongruent words (Experiment 1).
Also naming a picture was faster than when a congruent word was present.
Therefore pictures activate the name code. Another experiment (Experiment
2) indicated that memory for pictures and words, whether they were
initially named or categorized had an effect on memory. Memory was better
for words if they have been categorized and for pictures if they have been
named. Experiment 3 showed the same results as the previous two
experiments. The fourth experiment, with the introduction of less common
objects, subjects could name the words faster than generating a category
name for the words. Naming pictures are prone to interference when
incongruent words are presented simultaneously. Word naming is not as much
influenced by distracting pictures. Pictures and words differ in the
amount of information to be filtered out, to get the correct response.

The design of this experiment is a within subject experiment as the
number of choices to be made after viewing the stimulus on the screen are
same for everybody (2,3,4). Also the meaning versus number choices (same,
different, conflicting) are used by everyone. The dependent variables in
this experiment are average accuracy (%) and average time/response (msec).
the independent variable is the random stimulus which appeared on the
screen, whether it was the same, different or conflicting. In this
experiment we were shown 2, 3, or 4 items on the screen in a randomized
form and had to select the right number of items using 2,3,4 on the
keyboard as quickly and accurately as possible.

In this experiment, the stroop task will be demonstrated. When there
is no conflict between the stimulus and response to be chosen, responses
will be quick and accurate. When there is a conflict between the stimulus
and response to be made, interference will exist and responding will be
slower and less accurate.

Results & Discussion Figure 1


The average accuracy in percent for subject 1, was good for the 'same'
condition. Then they started to decrease when the stimulus was 'different'.
This score for subject 1 at the 'different' condition was the lowest among
all 3 conditions. When the stimulus was 'conflicting', subject 1 was losing
accuracy again and so was not as high as in the 'same' condition. Subject
1 was less accurate in the 'different' and 'conflicting' situations.

The average accuracy in percent for subject 2, was quite consistent,
being one hundred percent in all conditions. So ...