The Stroop Effect

          This effect is named after John Ridley Stroop, who discovered this in 1930. It is an experiment to measure the amount of time it takes to react to different stimulates. There are 3 types of stimuli to this experiment. The first one is to write colors with black ink. In the second one, the names and the color ink used are different, and in the third one, there are squares with a given color.

Then, you are given the task of reading the colors. At first, you read the colors written in black ink. And then, with the second one, you have to read the color of the ink used to write the color, and not the word itself.

          When you do this experiment, what you will encounter is that when you try to do the second one, your brain can’t react fast enough, causing you to momentarily begin to say the word that appears instead of the color ink.

          The reason behind this strange phenomenon is that because we have been reading throughout our whole live, and sometimes, when we see the beginning of a word, we can pretty much guess the rest of it and say it, without really actually finishing reading that word. So the words themselves have more influence than the ability to name the color without processing the word, making you stumble a bit. That is called the Speed of Processing Theory. There is also another theory, Selective Attention Theory, which basically says that the interference occurs because naming colors requires more attention than reading words.

The Myth of Multitasking

         

           Multitasking has been considered by many psychiatrists to be a myth because our brain can’t actually do two things at once. Sure, you can walk and talk at the same time, but that’s because you are using two different parts of the brain while you do so, so it doesn’t affect much of your performance. But some other cases like writing an essay and watching the TV at the same time, it seems like you are doing two things at once, but in reality, you are just switching back and forth. So there is no such thing as multitasking.

          The term “response selection bottleneck” refers to when you are doing many things at once; you actually have to prioritize them and then do it one by one, like filtering them first. This usually shows how you slow down and can’t perform as well as when you are only doing one thing at a time, with your undivided attention.

          David Meyer says that multitasking releasing stress hormones and adrenaline is important because if you keep multitasking, excess amount of these things will be produced and can cause a long-term damage. This can lead to the loss of short-term memory. Although his research also says that maybe, with training, your mind can switch back and forth more effectively, although never actually reaching the term "multitasking"

          Russell Poldrack found that you can actually learn when you multitask, but that learning is less pliable and more direct, making it harder to call back this piece of information stored. His research shows the different parts of the brain used to learn and to store new information when they are not focused. And since we are designed to focus,  we are not being as efficient as we thought we are, because the information is not stored in the part of the brain that makes it easier to retrieve.

          The author concludes that if we keep on multitasking, we are not being more efficient, but on the contrary, our brains don't work as well as when you are concentrating on only one thing at once. This is important because it affects everything in our daily lives. Companies, for example, will maybe earn less than a profit. Students will probably score lower on tests. The author also states that in the future we will invent new devices to help us overcome the unintended attention towards other things and to set mental limits when we try to do too much in a short amount of time. Or maybe we will simply adjust and those things that used to be a distraction, like phone ringings, getting emails, television sounds, will merely be some very distant background noises that doesn't affect us much anymore.

Observations of the BaMbuti Pygmies

          The BaMbuti Pygmies is located in Congo, Africa. They are hunter-gatherers and one of the oldest indigenous people in Africa. They are classified into four distinct cultures, each speaking a different language. They live in a tropical rainforest in the Forest of Ituri. They are the shortest of the pygmies, with an average of 4 feet 6 inches. Their culture is very different from our own and the African Pygmies are one group of people whose lifestyle has changed very little despite various foreign invasions.

          Colin Turnbull was a Britsh-American anthropologist who did many studies on the BaMbuti Pygmies. This study made him well known since it made a lot of contributions to the study of perception and how it affects the way we live. He said “The identity of the BaMbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in the Congo with the forest itself goes beyond their social life; they are also psychologically conditioned by their environment. This can best be illustrated by some observations that I made during a recent field trip in their country.”

Turnbull first realized that distance affects perception was when he was with a pygmy called Kenge and when they saw buffalos in the distance, Kenge actually asked what kind of insect are those. And while they approached the buffalos, Kenge was shocked at what at first seemed so small, is actually immensely huge.

The reason behind this is because pygmies’ natural habitat is the forest, so they hardly ever see things that are further away, thus their lack of knowledge that things at an distance looks smaller than it actually is. This proves that you are what you’ve seen and experienced, so no two person’s perception is the same.