Consciousness as a psychological construct informed by the work of René Descartes and William James
Click on this linkto examine the ideas of these two significant thinkers in the history of psychology. The website (http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Table.html) was originally designed to celebrate the first century of psychology as an independent discipline.
Stroop found that when the name of a colour was printed in ink of a conflicting colour, this interfered with people’s ability to state the colour of the ink used.
During normal waking consciousness we are awake and aware of both our internal world (mental states such as thoughts and feelings) and of the sensations we are experiencing from the outside world. While our level of awareness may vary, our perceptions and thoughts are clear and organised and we are aware of ourselves as having a personal identity, a continuing self. We can focus our attention on what interests us and on what catches our attention.
One set of psychological studies that explores human attention is that developed by J.Ridley Stroop, whose findings were so interesting that he had a phenomenon named after him: the Stroop Effect.
One finding from Stroop’s experiments and those that followed them is that when people are asked to complete a task that involves both automatic and controlled processing, it is very difficult for them to prevent themselves from automatically processing stimuli, even when they have been given a task that requires controlled processing. For instance, when given words to look at, it is automatic for most adults to read them. When they are given a different task to do, such as determining the colour in which the words are written, and especially when these words are written in a conflicting colour (RED, GREEN, etc.), interference occurs and processing is consequently less swift and efficient.
Try this out for yourself at the Neuroscience for Kids website, which has a simple activity based on the Stroop Effect for you to try.
