Stroop Test
Name the ink colour, not the word — a measure of focus and mental flexibility.
What it measures
Your susceptibility to the Stroop effect — the slowdown that occurs when you must name the ink colour of a word while ignoring the colour name the word spells. The gap between incongruent and congruent trials (the interference effect) is a widely used index of selective attention and inhibitory control.
How it works
Colour words such as RED, GREEN, BLUE, and YELLOW appear in an ink colour that sometimes matches the word and sometimes doesn’t. Your job is to pick the ink colour — not what the word says — from four buttons. Across about sixteen trials we record your accuracy and response times, then compute the interference: your average time on mismatched trials minus your time on matching ones.
Tips for an accurate result
- 1Focus on the ink — Try to ‘unfocus’ from reading and attend only to colour. With practice the interference shrinks.
- 2Balance speed and accuracy — Racing causes errors; over-caution inflates your times. Aim for fast responses you can stand behind.
- 3Rest before testing — Inhibitory control is sensitive to fatigue and stress — a tired brain shows a larger Stroop effect.
- 4Compare like with like — Practice and learning reduce interference, so judge your own change over repeated sessions.