Name the shapes and their related colors in the 4 x 4 aligned boxes above as fast as you can. Do not read the words below the shapes! For example, even if the sentence “Blue Square” is printed under a red triangle, you should say “red triangle” instead. Say the colors and shapes as fast as you can. It is not as easy as you might think... If you complete this attention test in less than 16 seconds, you have a VERY flexible brain!
The Stroop test is one of the most commonly used diagnostic tools when determining an attention problem. It involves focusing on one particular feature of a task, while blocking out other features; in other words, it indicates how well you can override a habitual response (naming the word) in favor of a novel one (naming the color/figure).
The “Stroop Effect” is named after J. Ridley Stroop, who discovered this strange phenomenon in the 1930s. The original test shown on this page has been adapted by G. Sarcone.
