The Stroop Effect

The stroop effect is a demonstration of reaction time of a task. They call it "stroop" because of a scientist named Ridley Stroop who published the effect in 1935 in an article entitled Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions, there 3 detailed experiment that he did.

In his experiment the task required the participant to read the written color names of the word independently of the color ink. In the next experiment the person had to say the color of the letters independently, and also had to name the color of the dot squares. This could be confusing and may take some time because the word could say "yellow" and the word is colored in green, but if you try to focus on the color and not the word it would be less confusing. This experiment allow the participant to read the color list a quick as possible to test the persons reaction time. This effect is used most commonly in psychological evaluations. The Studies of the Stroop effect have consistently revealed activation in the front lobe and more specifically in the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, two structures hypothesized to be responsible for conflict monitoring and resolution. People who have frontal lesions obtain a lower punctuations in the stroop test.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

Multi-task Questions

1.Why is multitasking considered by many psychologists to be a myth?

Multitasking is a myth because you can't do 2 things at the same time because after someone perfomes an act they will move one to the next act, and keep jumping back and forth.

2.To what does the term "response selection bottleneck" refer?

Respones seletion bottle neck refers to the brain to respond to several stimuli at once. This causes people to loose time.

3.David Meyer has found that multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline. Why is this important?

The release of stress hormones can damage your health, it leads to conflict of short term memory. Now that we know about this we can lower the cause.

4.Explain what Russell Podrack found regarding multitasking.

He found out that multi-task can affect the way we learn. When you multitask you do not recieve information efficiently, and you will not learn well.

5.What does the author conclude could happen to our culture as a result of increased multitasking?

He concludes that multitasking means the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention. William James, the great psychologist wrote a book called "The Principal of Psychology" in 1890.

The Mbuti Tribe

The Bambuti are pygmy hunter-gatherers, They travel in groups and they are small in size ranging for 15 to 60 people, but overall the population is about 30,000-60,000 people. There 4 types of cultures that the Bambuti learn: the Efe, the Sua, the Mbuti, and the Aka. They live in the forest of Ituri, its 70,000 square kilometers of forest, there is large amount of rainfall nearly about 50 to 60 inches of rain. There Religion has do with the forest they consider that the trees are there greatest protector they somtimes call there protector "mother" or "father". Colin Turnbull was a famous anthropologist, he first realized that distance affected perception because he went with Kenge, and he saw buffalo from a distance and he asked Turnbull want kind of insects are they, but then Kenge was socked when Turnbull told him that it was buffalo from a distance. Kenge knew that buffalo where not small.


The pygmy would also be socked the same way as Kenge did because since they live in a forest the trees block there view, and because of that they know less about reality than we do. Everything is learned by experience.




Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Turnbull