Debriefing
The Stroop task demonstrates that the naming of incongruent colours (e.g. naming BLUE as “green”) is slower than the naming of congruent colours (e.g. naming GREEN as “green”). This effect occurs because reading words is automatic. It’s something we do without thinking, since chances are, if there are words there, it’s a good idea to read them! Naming colours, on the other hand, is something few people need to do as a part of everyday life, so it is a less automatic task. In order to name the colours in a condition where the word and colour don’t match, we must suppress our automatic reading of the word and name the colour it is presented it, which is tricky and slows us down. Reading is one of many cognitive processes that we learn to do automatically, without needing attention. The Stroop task effect has been found for a wide variety of stimuli. In any condition where an automatic process must be suppressed to make the response, naming will be slower than when no automatic process needs to be suppressed.