Stroop Test - Color Word Challenge

How the Stroop Test Works

The Stroop Test challenges your selective attention by asking you to focus on the color of a word while ignoring what the word says. When the two conflict, it can become surprisingly difficult to respond quickly and accurately.

The Stroop Test is named after psychologist J. Ridley Stroop, who published a famous study in 1935. He found that people take longer to name an ink color when the word itself names a different color. For example, seeing the word BLUE printed in red ink creates interference between reading the word and identifying its color. This is known as the Stroop effect. Learn more about this study: Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions

• Press Play, then click the game area to begin.
• A color word will appear in colored ink. Select the button that matches the ink color, not the word itself.
• Complete 25 trials. Each wrong answer costs 1 heart, and losing all 3 hearts ends the run.
• Your score is your average response time for correct answers, measured in milliseconds. Lower is better.
• Only runs completed before losing all 3 hearts count as a finished result.
• This game is based on the classic Stroop task, but it is not a standardized clinical or diagnostic assessment.

Understanding Your Stroop Effect

Your score is your average response time. On the result screen, you will also find a little extra for the curious, your personal Stroop effect.

Words helping you: your average response time on trials where the word and the ink color match (for example, BLUE printed in blue). Reading the word points you toward the correct answer, so these are usually your fastest trials.

Words fighting you: your average response time on trials where the word names a different color from the ink (for example, BLUE printed in red). Your brain reads the word automatically and prepares the wrong answer, so overriding it takes extra time.

Your Stroop effect: the difference between these two averages. This gap is your personal Stroop effect: how much the automatic habit of reading slows you down when the word and the ink color disagree.

Nearly everyone shows a positive gap. A single run contains only a handful of matching-color trials, so one slow response can noticeably shift the numbers. An occasional near-zero result is completely normal.