Do I look Stroopid?

While I can agree that cognitive thinking in men diminishes around the presence of women. The whole idea of a stroop test was interesting enough to research on its own. Named after German psychologist John Ridley Stroop after he published the Stroop Effect in 1929, it is a simple test of one's ability to direct attention. It tests one's mental vitality and flexibility.

How the test works is simple, a series of words printed in different ink colours are written in word trees. The subject is asked to name the colour each word is written in rather than the actual word itself. Example the word 'green' can be written in red ink. The test is to measure how long it takes for the subject to complete the word tree. While it may sound easy its actually much harder than it sounds as most people's attentions lead them to recognise words faster than they can process the colour it is written in.

Try it, run through the Stroop test.

First just name the colours the words are written in and then afterwards try to go through the word tree again but say the colour the word is written in instead. It's much harder the second time around.



Practising this will keep your mind sharp which I guess is good. All I do is eat a fist full of fish oil tablets and listen to the podcasts. I should probably try more mental stimulating activities like completing word puzzles and sudokus. Maybe even buy some puzzle games....

But not Bejeweled... Bejeweled can go to hell.