I don’t normally watch TV during the week however I made an exception a few days ago when I returned home from work and turned on the TV briefly and the One shop on the TV license revenue stealing black hole which is the BBC. The episode was about the Stroop test and asking people if they could take part at home (user interaction 2.0), at first I didn’t know what this was so instead of switching off I thought I would watch on and see where this went.

Well the Stroop test spot lasted about 2mins with the presenters glossing over  the history and context of the Stroop test and went with the tried and trusted method of letting some “celebrity” (this word is used very loosely) make a quick 2minute comment/attempt and moving on. I understand that you have 1 hour to cram a lot in but I would rather the presenters spend 3 mins on this spot than 10-15 interviewing some celebrity (again world used loosely) that has the mental age of a 13 year old from Eastbourne.  So I took it upon myself to do some research on the internet which had lots of information about this – Its seems that your brain finds it very hard to differentiate from doing two tasks or interpreting two different types of information at once – similar to the old touch your head and rub your belly party trick. If a number or letter is presented to such an individual in a color other than what they would perceive your brain has a delay in determining what color the character actually is, this delay can be measured to determine your current mental state. The cognitive mechanism involved in this task is called directed attention, you have to manage your attention, inhibit or stop one response in order to say or do something else.

In psychology, the Stroop effect is a demonstration of the reaction time of a task. When a word such as blue, green, red, etc. is printed in a color differing from the color expressed by the word’s semantic meaning (e.g. the word “red” printed in blue ink), naming the color of the word takes longer and is more prone to errors than when the meaning of the word is congruent with its ink color. The effect is named after John Ridley Stroop who first published the effect in English in 1935. This has been used to investigate aspects of such varied psychological disorders as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Anorexia.

Now what does this actually mean, then take a long at the image below and first read out what you see. Then try and say the actual colours you see –

I found this very interesting so I thought I would drop this down.

On a totally different note I read a interesting story about a 13 year old child who has got a 15/16 year old girl pregnant in Eastbourne. In the boys defense he wants to be a good dad and is planning on supporting his new son and his girlfriend. Now I don’t know what’s worse a 13 year old having sex, the media circus that has now surrounded the boy and his family Or the pedophile 16 year old that couldn’t find someone her own age and opted for a 13 year old who I am guessing was a easy target – however in the kids defense he knocks it out the park first time he’s up to bat. Do you know this kid if so please show him what a condom is.

Two post in on week I must be on a role…