03 / 07
The Reverse Stroop Effect — When Ink Color Gets in the Way of Reading
Usually words interfere with color, but depending on how you respond, color can interfere with words too. When the reverse Stroop effect appears, and how to read this site's “word meaning” mode.
In Experiment 1 of Stroop's original paper, ink color barely interfered with reading words (43.30 s versus 41.00 s). For a long time, Stroop interference was therefore thought to run in one direction only: from word to color. The reverse Stroop effect is the opposite — ink color interfering with judging the meaning of a word.
When does it appear?
In tasks where you read words aloud, there is almost no reverse Stroop effect. Reading is so fast and familiar that color has no chance to intrude. Change the response method, however, and the picture changes. Durgin (2000) had participants, instead of reading the word, point to a color patch matching the color the word named, and reported a clear reverse Stroop effect: responses slowed down when the ink color differed from the word.
The key point is that the dimension more directly linked to the response wins. When you answer aloud, the word is directly tied to the spoken response and dominates; when the response is picking a color patch, the ink color is directly tied to the response and dominates. The parallel distributed processing model (Cohen et al., 1990) also explains this reversal through pathway strength and task demands.
Reverse Stroop mode on this site
Switch the task to Word meaning in the settings to enter reverse Stroop mode. Ignore the ink color and press the button for the color the word names.
- Congruent — RED in red ink.
- Incongruent — RED in blue ink.
- Neutral — RED in achromatic ink (black on a light screen, white on a dark screen).
Each button shows both a color swatch and the color name in text. The swatch links directly to ink color and the text to the word, so both dimensions are fairly close to the response. As a result, interference in reverse Stroop mode tends to be smaller than in ink-color mode, and for some people it may be almost absent. Doing both modes lets you compare in which direction your interference is larger.
Things to keep in mind when reading results
- The neutral condition in reverse Stroop mode is a color word in achromatic ink, which is different in nature from the neutral condition in ink-color mode (colored XXXX). Rather than comparing facilitation and inhibition values directly across modes, look at the difference between congruent and incongruent within each mode.
- The reverse Stroop effect is usually smaller than the Stroop effect, so with few trials it is easily buried in random variation. It is best to repeat 72-trial sessions several times and look at the trend.
- Word-meaning mode does not require distinguishing ink colors, so it is less affected by color vision deficiency. Mismatched ink still acts as a distractor, though.
References
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643–662.
Durgin, F. H. (2000). The reverse Stroop effect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7(1), 121–125.
Cohen, J. D., Dunbar, K., & McClelland, J. L. (1990). On the control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed processing account of the Stroop effect. Psychological Review, 97(3), 332–361.