Score 0
Streak 0
Time 60
Ready
Stroop Test
Tap the colour the word is printed in — not the colour it spells.
Tap a colour or press 1–4
Tap a colour or press 1–4
The Stroop test is the classic demonstration of interference in the brain. A colour word appears — say the word RED — but it is printed in a different colour, say blue. Your job is to name the ink colour, blue, and ignore what the word actually says. It sounds trivial and it is genuinely hard, because reading is so automatic that the written word answers before you have decided to look at the colour. Tap one of the four buttons, or press the number keys 1 to 4. You have 60 seconds and your score is the number you get right.
A correct answer builds your streak; a wrong one resets it and costs you a point, so wild guessing is worse than slowing down. The trick most people find is to defocus slightly — look at the letters without reading them, or fix on a single letter rather than the whole word — which weakens the automatic reading response enough for the colour to come through first. Scores in the twenties are ordinary, forty-plus is quick. Psychologists have used this effect since 1935 to measure selective attention and processing speed; here it is just a satisfying sixty seconds of arguing with your own reflexes. Your best score is saved in this browser.