The reverse Stroop effect

In classic Stroop interference, manual or oral identification of sensory co lors presented as incongruent color words is delayed relative to simple col or naming. In the experiment reported here, this effect was shown to all bu t disappear when the response was simply to point to a matching patch of co lor. Conversely, strong reverse Stroop interference occurred with the point ing task. That is, when the sensory color of a color word was incongruent w ith that word, responses to color words were delayed by an average of 69 ms ec relative to a word presented in gray. Thus, incongruently colored words interfere strongly with pointing to a color patch named by the words, but l ittle interference from incongruent color words is found when the goal is t o match the color of the word. These results suggest that Stroop effects ar ise from response compatibility of irrelevant information rather than autom atic processing or habit strength.