SEPARATING SPEED FROM AUTOMATICITY IN A PATIENT WITH FOCAL BRAIN ATROPHY

Automatic processes are characterized as being rapid as requiring litt le attentional effort, and as obligatory (once initiated, the activity cannot be inhibited or controlled). In contrast, controlled processes are slower, require attention, and are nonobligatory. This distinctio n appears in the Stroop effect: the interference that appears when a p erson tries to name the color of the ink in which a word is printed wh en the word spells the name of a different color. This effect has hist orically been attributed to an automatic reading of the color name int erfering with the slower, less automatic, naming of the ink color (Mac Leod, 1991; Stroop, 1935). In this report, we describe a patient with focal brain atrophy whose speed of reading was no faster than his spee d of naming colors, but who still showed the classic Stroop effect. Th is finding critically challenges the traditional identification of aut omaticity with processing speed.