What the Stroop effect is
In 1935 the American psychologist John Ridley Stroop published a study in which people named the ink colour of words. When the word “red” was printed in red, they did it quickly. When “red” was printed in blue, they hesitated noticeably and made more mistakes. The reason is that adult reading is automatic: we read a word even when nobody asks us to, and the brain has to suppress that response.
The time difference between “matching” and “conflicting” items is called the Stroop effect. The smaller it is, the better you are at handling interference.
How to read your online results
- Average time — the speed of your correct answers.
- Stroop effect — how much slower you are on conflicting words than on matching ones.
- Accuracy — the share of correct answers. If you make many mistakes, slow down: the test is about control, not speed.
Two modes
In the classic mode you choose the ink colour — harder, because you have to fight your reading. In Word meaning mode you choose the colour the word names, ignoring the ink; that is how the Color Word game in the Cabe app works. Try both and compare: for most people the classic mode is slower.
Why train cognitive control
Ignoring distractions is something you need every day: working in a noisy office, not reacting to notifications, finishing a text without switching. The Stroop test is one of the most studied tasks for this ability. Practice mainly improves your score on the task itself; to carry the skill into everyday life, combine it with the habit of removing distractions — turning off unnecessary notifications and doing one task at a time.
Stroop in the Cabe app
The Attention section has two games built on this effect: Color Word (pick the colour by the word’s meaning) and Color Text (quickly answer whether the word’s meaning matches its ink colour). Both let you set the number of attempts and show time and accuracy statistics.