Term of Award

Winter 1981

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Department

Department of Psychology

Committee Chair

Richard L. Rogers

Committee Member 1

Paul R. Kleinginna, Jr.

Committee Member 2

Gary McClure

Abstract

In the past 45 years there has been a growing interest in color-word naming or, as it is more commonly called today, the Stroop task. The present study was concerned with differential hemispheric processing of Stroop stimuli and the mode of response to these stimuli. The subjects for this study were 60 right-handed male volunteers with normal color vision and normal or correctedto- normal visual acuity. The subjects were randomly assigned to the manual response or the vocal response group, each of which had 30 members. Each group was presented 4 congruent, 4 control (X's), and 12 incongrueut color-word combinations per hemisphere totalling 40 Stroop stimuli presentations per series. Each subject was presented three random series of the Stroop stimuli on three successive work days. The stimuli were presented tachistoscopically for 100 msec 2 degrees either left or right of the subject's fixation point. The subjects in both groups responded by identifying the color of the ink in which the color-word combinations were printed. Response latencies in msec were recorded. A split-plot factorial analysis of variance revealed that the main effect of response type did not produce a significant difference. The main effect of the hemispheric factor did produce a significant difference along with the main effect of the color-word combinations. All three two-way interactions were significant, but the one three-way interaction was not. The hemisphere by colorword combination interaction produced a significant difference. This indicates that congruent and control (X's) color-word combinations presented to the dominant hemisphere did take longer to process than presentations to the nondominant hemisphere for manual and vocal response nodes. The type of response by hemisphere interaction indicated that the nondominant hemisphere did process the Stroop more quickly than the dominant hemisphere for the manual response mode. The type of response by color-word combinations interaction indicated that the type of response had a significant effect on the congruent and control color-word combinations, but did not have a significant effect on the incongruent color-word combinations. The congruent color-word combinations were processed most quickly, the control combinations at a slower rate, and the incongruent combinations most slowly. There was no effect due to type of response for these stimuli.

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