Selective Attention to Words and Colours

Morton, John; Chambers, Susan M.

doi:10.1080/14640747308400360

Cited by 169 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

116

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Fifteen of the 18 subjects had a larger Stroop effect in the right ear, as shown in Table 2, and the test yielded T = 23, P < .01. It is worth noting that 2 mixed-handed 80 COHEN AND MARTIN this effect which has considerable experimental support has been offered by Morton and Chambers (1973) in terms of response competition. They suggest that interference is greater when the irrelevant attribute of the stimulus is analyzed faster than the relevant attribute, and the unwanted response is therefore available first.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Hemisphere differences in an auditory Stroop test

Cohen

Martin

1975

Perception & Psychophysics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In an auditory Stroop test, right-handed subjects were required to judge the pitch of the followingstimuli: two pure tones, one at a high frequency and one at a low frequency; two congruent words, "high," sung at the high frequency, and "low," sung at the low frequency; and two noncongruent words, "high" at lowfrequency and "low" at high frequency. A sequence of these stimuli was presented monaurally first to one ear, and then to the other. The Stroop effect (the difference between mean RT to congruent words, and mean RT to noncongruent words) was larger for right ear (left hemisphere) presentation. The same experiment was repeated dichotically with a competing message presented to the opposite ear. Again, the Stroop effect was larger for the right ear, and the ear differences were slightly more marked. The result is interpreted as reflecting hemispheric specialization for linguistic and nonlinguistic processing and a model of Stroop conflict in which response competition varies with the relative availability of the conflicting response.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Hemisphere differences in an auditory Stroop test

Cohen

Martin

1975

Perception & Psychophysics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Specifically, Morton and Chambers (1973) propose that the name of the word enters a response buffer faster than that of the color. Morton and Chambers' proposal is based on the intuitively plausible notion that speed of deriving a verbal response to word stimuli is faster than to nonword stimuli, and that for the skilled reader it is automatic.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conscious and unconscious perception: Experiments on visual masking and word recognition

Marcel

1983

Cognitive Psychology

1,300

722

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Five experiments are presented which explore the relation of masking to consciousness and visual word processing. In Experiment 1 a single word or blank field was followed by a pattern mask. Subjects had to make one of three decisions: Did anything precede the mask? To which of two probe words was what preceded the mask more similar graphically? To which of two probe words was it more similar semantically? As word-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was reduced, subjects reached chance performance on the detection, graphic, and semantic decisions in that order. In Experiment 2, subjects again had to choose which of two words was more similar either graphically or semantically to a nondetectable masked word, but the forced-choice stimuli now covaried negatively on graphic and semantic similarity. Subjects were now unable to choose selectively on each dimension, suggesting that their ability to choose in Experiment 1 was passively rather than intentionally mediated. In Experiment 3 subjects had to make manual identification responses to color patches which were either accompanied or preceded by words masked to prevent awareness. Color-congruent words facilitated reaction time (RT), color-incongruent words delayed RT. Experiment 4 used a lexical decision task where a trial consisted of the critical letter string following another not requiring a response. When both were words they were either semantically associated or not. The first letter string was either left unmasked, energy masked monoptically, or pattern masked dichoptically to prevent awareness. The effect of association was equal in the unmasked and pattern masked cases, but absent with energy masking. In Experiment 5 repeating a word-plus-mask (where the SOA precluded detection) from 1 to 20 times (a) increased the association effect on a subsequent lexical decision, but had no effect on (b) detectability or(c) the semantic relatedness of forced guesses of the masked word. It is proposed that central pattern masking has little effect on visual processing itself (while peripheral energy masking does), but affects availability of records of the results of those processes to consciousness. Perceptual processing itself is unconscious and automatically proceeds to all levels of analysis and redescription available to the perceiver. The general importance of these findings is to cast doubt on the paradigm assumption that representations yielded by perceptual analysis are identical to and directly reflected by phenomenal percepts. Experiments 1, 3, and 4

show abstract

“…Called "speed-ofprocessing models" by Macleod (1991; also called "horse-race models" by Dunbar & Macleod, 1984), this view states that the Stroop asymmetry is attributable to the inherently faster speed with which humans process and respond to words as opposed to colors (Dyer, 1973;Fraisse, 1969;Keele, 1972;Morton & Chambers, 1973;Posner & Snyder, 1975;Treisman, 1969;see Macleod, 1991, for a review). The idea is that asymmetry in the speed of processing leads to slowed color naming because of a competition at a single-channel response stage between responses to words, which are available first, and responses to colors, which are the basis of the classification.…”

Section: Relation To Speed-of-processing Models: Previous Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective attention to Stroop dimensions: Effects of baseline discriminability, response mode, and practice

1993

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The framework of dimensional interaction was used to test the hypothesis that the Stroop effect is partially rooted in mismatches in baseline discriminability, with stimulus differences along the word dimension typically exceeding stimulus differences along the color dimension. Subjects made speeded classifications, with either keypresses or vocalizations, of either words or colors. Stroop congruity and Garner interference were measured under conditions in which discriminabilities were (l) matched (Experiments 1 and 4), (2) mismatched in favor of colors (Experiment 2), or (3) mismatched in favor of words (Experiment 3). When matched, colors and words appeared separable, with small interactive effects being reduced or eliminated through practice. When mismatched, asymmetric Stroop and Garner effects emerged, with the more discriminable dimension disrupting classification of the less discriminable dimension. Asymmetric effects were obtained in both response modes, and were not alleviated by practice. We conclude that (1) the Stroop effect is an optional effect, and (2) unequal discriminability causes a mandatory failure of selective attention.In his comprehensive review, MacLeod (1991) noted that, since the seminal paper by Stroop in 1935, over 700 articles have explored some aspect of the phenomenon that Stroop discovered. Stroop's study is especially intriguing because of the peculiar asymmetry that characterized his subjects' performance: When they read color words printed in various colors, irrelevant color had no effect on performance; however, when they named the colors of these words, the irrelevant words hindered performance significantly. This asymmetry is known universally as the Stroop effect. Much is now known about how this effect relates to a host of experimental variables. Some ofthese relations are discussed below. Despite an enormous amount of empirical study, however, the wider theoretical implications of Stroop's work have largely eluded researchers. In the present study, we view the Stroop effect in a different light-namely, that of research and theory on dimensional interaction. This approach permits us to fit the Stroop effect comfortably into the broader framework of what factors cause selective attention to succeed or fail. Our efforts yield new insights into the nature of the Stroop effect, on the one hand, and the nature of selective attention, on the other. Selective Attention and Dimensional InteractionThe questions of whether and how humans integrate the separate sources of information in their environment have enjoyed considerable research focus within cognitive psychology. One reason is that these issues have great bearing on the nature of many fundamental cognitive processes, including those in perception (see, e.g., Ashby

show abstract

Selective Attention to Words and Colours

Cited by 169 publications

References 16 publications

Hemisphere differences in an auditory Stroop test

Hemisphere differences in an auditory Stroop test

Conscious and unconscious perception: Experiments on visual masking and word recognition

Selective attention to Stroop dimensions: Effects of baseline discriminability, response mode, and practice

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About