Stroop interference in naming and verifying spatial locations

Two experiments are reported that were designed to assess effects of semantic similarity on naming and verification of spatial locations. In Experiment I, the wordsabove, below, left, andright occurred as distractors when Ss named the location of the word relative to a dot, or the location of a dot relative to the word. In Experiment II. the same dot-word displays were used, but Ss reported whether or not the word correctly specified its own location relative to the dot or the location of the dot relative to itself. The naming task showed some within-dimension facilitation and interference effects, most notably when Ss named the location occupied by the distractor word. The verification tasks showed quite substantial retardation of “no” responses when the word and location represented different values on either the horizontal or the vertical dimension.     

The power of transformation

Conclusion The answer to the question, how is man empowered to change? can be given in this form: We are empowered to change when we experience trust and acceptance coming to us from another person or group. Change occurs when our power of being is affirmed by other centers of power. This affirmation of our power of being overcomes the anxiety of nonbeing implied in every change. It supplies us with the courage to accept our acceptance and to exist in spite of threats to our existence. The content of trust in our experiencing that has taken the place of the prior anxiety in our experiencing reduces the disturbances that distorted our perception of reality. This enables us to receive reality more accurately and to symbolize it more exactly. Change then is an internal metamorphosis that is the result of a courage educed in us by external forces. The transformation of our internal experiencing is the prior condition and ground for the transformation of our symbolizations.He is a Fellow of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and a member of the Academy.     

Stroop interference with response,comparison, and encoding stages in a sentence-picture comparison task

The paper discusses a Stroop variant of the word-picture comparison task analyzed by Chase and Clark (1971). The locatives above or below were printed at the center of a reference square, and Ss reported “Yes” if there was a word or an array of Xs in the location specified and “No” if there was not. Under the control (Xs) conditions, above displays were classified faster than below displays and true displays faster than false displays. These effects were unaltered when the words “yes” or “no” or “right” or “wrong” were printed in place of the Xs, although there was a small overall increase in response latency under these Stroop conditions that was independent of agreement or disagreement between the distractor and the response to be made. When the locatives up and down were printed on the display, a substantial Stroop effect was observed, and the above-below and true-false effects were eliminated. These results are discussed in relation to theories about the nature of Stroop interference and processes involved in sentence-picture comparisons.