This research investigated the underlying causes of interference in the Stroop task. The participants involved in this research were the 131 students of the PY1101 at James Cook University. They consisted of 90 females and 40 males with a mean age of 23.63 years, and unfortunately, one participant did not contribute to the result due to an unknown circumstance. The participants were given three tasks: word task, coloured block task and the Stroop task. Errors and the amount of time it took the participants to response for each task was recorded along with their gender and age. The overall results of this research supported the two hypotheses which are: the word task would be completed faster than the coloured blocks task and that the Stroop task would be done slower than the coloured blocks task.
Once in a while, people encounter distractions or information that are difficult to ignore when attempting to focus on a specific task. Previous research has suggested that these distractions cause an interference that take place when the brain struggles to organise information that contradict each other. While selecting the appropriate response within these information, this occurrence consequently causes the brain's reaction time to process at a slower rate. A perfect demonstration of interference is the Stroop effect, a study focused on the time the brain reacts during a task. This effect generally reveals that the majority of people read words impulsively and faster than naming colours. .
The Stroop effect is usually accompanied by the Stroop test. The test measures the amount of time it takes for people to respond when asked to read colour words printed in black compared to naming the colour that the colour word is printed in (an example of this would be the colour 'red' printed in yellow). It was observed that in the second task, people tend to respond slower and are more inclined to make errors than the first task.