#1. The Stroop Test: Great brain teaser to challenge your mental vitality and flexibility

stroop-testReady to test your men­tal vital­i­ty and flexibility?

Quick — say aloud what col­or you see in every word, NOT the word you read.

Go from left to right, from top to down. Ready. Set. Go!

—-

Not easy, right? This task is called the Stroop Test, and is used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure men­tal vital­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty, since per­form­ing well requires strong atten­tion, inhi­bi­tion and self-reg­u­la­tion capa­bil­i­ty (also called exec­u­tive func­tions).

Next brain teas­er in Sharp­Brains’ top 25 series:

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70 Comments

  1. Todd Latham on December 16, 2006 at 2:38

    Easy at first, but you almost have to shout out the col­or towards the end to make sure you get it right!



  2. DigitalRich on December 20, 2006 at 1:20

    Weird- oppo­site for me. I had to slow down when it switched over, but then i devel­oped a steady pat­tern that got me through no prob­lem. Fun.



  3. Alvaro on December 21, 2006 at 2:05

    Great, you found the way to do it quickly!



  4. Justine on January 28, 2007 at 1:19

    I’ve seen this exer­cise, and inter­est­ing­ly enough, it does­n’t prove par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing for peo­ple who’s first lan­guage is not English.



  5. Alvaro on January 29, 2007 at 9:48

    Makes sense-because they haven’t devel­oped the auto­mat­ic habit of identifying/ read­ing those words with the same strength.



  6. chris on February 12, 2007 at 11:33

    hah the fastest way to do this isnt by slow­ing down, it is by let­ting go of yuor eyes focus, allow them to go blur­ry and only focus on the col­or spots you see.. ignore the now blurred hard-to-read text.



  7. Alvaro on February 14, 2007 at 6:07

    hi Chris, yes, that is a good strategy



  8. kyle on August 25, 2007 at 6:19

    very cool…almost made it through



  9. Brad on October 16, 2007 at 4:50

    I found that say­ing “I see” in my had before say­ing the col­or out loud gave me enough time to get it correct.



  10. Alvaro on October 16, 2007 at 8:15

    Kyle, try a cou­ple more times, and am sure you’ll do it full.

    Brad: yes, the extra time may help you there But try to do it faster :-)



  11. FreeBee on October 18, 2007 at 5:58

    Hi,

    I’m sor­ry, but I have to dis­agree with Jus­tine, who said that it may be less chal­leng­ing to some­one who isn’t a native eng­lish speaker…

    I’m Dutch (from the Nether­lands), and just like some of the oth­ers, I had to speak up, to make sure I was nam­ing the col­ors, not the words.

    On the oth­er hand, there may still be truth in Justine’s remark, since I’ve been accused of being indis­tin­guish­able from a native eng­lish speak­er. I’ve used the lan­guage for over 30 years now, although not exclusively.



  12. Alvaro on October 18, 2007 at 7:05

    Thanks for the com­ment, Free­Bee. You are both right, in that the test is more dif­fi­cult for Eng­lish speak­ers, while it is dif­fi­cult for every­one read­ing this (Eng­lish-lan­guage) blo.

    For a, let’s say, Chi­nese per­son who has nev­er been exposed to Eng­lish, it should be pret­ty easy.



  13. AA on October 30, 2007 at 11:42

    Basi­cal­ly, i shrinked my eyes and I was able to solve very quickly.



  14. Jazz on November 6, 2007 at 8:30

    What is this test sup­posed to do for our brain?



  15. Alvaro on November 6, 2007 at 7:51

    Jazz:

    1) sim­ply pro­vide a fun challenge

    2) used by an expert, assess one’s capac­i­ty to con­trol impulses



  16. pheyvin on November 21, 2007 at 2:01

    focus­ing only on the last let­ter of each word made it eas­i­er for me to iden­ti­fy the col­ors correctly.



  17. R on January 4, 2008 at 9:30

    Liked it,its eas­i­er if you read the words in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage than english.



  18. Dan on January 27, 2008 at 6:58

    It got eas­i­er when I squint­ed and made my vision slight­ly blur­ry so that the words were dif­fi­cult to read but the col­ors stood out.



  19. Asir on February 19, 2008 at 12:57

    me to .. i agree with Dan



  20. Joan on February 25, 2008 at 10:21

    I would like to see the test timed and indi­cate the num­ber cor­rect to see if I am mak­ing progress.



  21. Isha on March 2, 2008 at 9:02

    I got through it fair­ly well by forc­ing my mind to focus only on the col­or I see and not even allow­ing myself to read the words.



  22. blau augen on March 23, 2008 at 11:14

    Quite easy and fun too :)



  23. Wayne on April 1, 2008 at 8:54

    This test has been inter­est­ing for me because after tak­ing the test a few (5?) times over the last cou­ple of years I have sort of “found a place in my mind” that allows me to do it cor­rect­ly. It is a lit­tle strug­gle to get there but once “there” I can “hang on”. It is an odd and inter­est­ing feel­ing. I remem­ber almost shout­ing the words the first time I tried it.



  24. Ricard on April 10, 2008 at 4:47

    Adjust your eyes so that the words are too blur­ry to read, then recite the colors.



  25. Pat on May 16, 2008 at 1:07

    How do you know for sure that you did it cor­rect­ly? It felt cor­rect to me, but if I missed one, how would I rec­og­nize that???



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SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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