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Psychological distance and reaction time in a Stroop task

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Abstract

Several sources of interference may simultaneously affect the onset of the well-known “Stroop effect.” Among them is the semantic component, which is reflected in the gradient or semantic effect. This effect consists of an increase in the amount of interference as the semantic distance between the word and the color concept decreases. Shepard (Science 237:1317–1323, 1987) relates psychological space, measured through multidimensional scaling, to mean response times. The present investigation aims to study the function relating the semantic gradient with the psychological distance between the word and the color in a Stroop task. After measuring the gradient, we obtained the subjective rating of the degree of dissimilarity of the gradient words with the concept of “color.” In our work, we show that the amount of interference in a Stroop task increases when the semantic distance from the word to the color concept decreases, and it does so exponentially. We replicated the study with different stimuli to test the robustness of the results.

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Notes

  1. Hereafter, the word in uppercase letters refers to the name of the color, and the subindex refers to the color of the ink.

  2. The photoreceptors of color called “cones” can be divided into three types—blues, greens, and reds—and, therefore, we can consider them to be the basic colors of sight. The activation or inhibition of these different types of cells depends on spectral opponency, which can be roughly classified into two types: blue–yellow contrast and red–green contrast (Mather 2006). These colors correspond to those found by Ekman (1956).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Giorgio De Marchis

  2. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain

    María del Prado Rivero Expósito & José Manuel Reales Avilés

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  1. Giorgio De Marchis
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  2. María del Prado Rivero Expósito
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  3. José Manuel Reales Avilés
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Correspondence to Giorgio De Marchis.

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De Marchis, G., Rivero Expósito, M.P. & Reales Avilés, J.M. Psychological distance and reaction time in a Stroop task. Cogn Process 14, 401–410 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-013-0569-x

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