The Stroop Effect

The stroop effect is originated by psychologist named John Ridley Stroop. He had an interest for conflicting processes. This was the study of interference of serial verbal reactions. J.R. Stroop made two important experiments which changed how people looked at attention and perception. The idea came to J.R. Stroop after a work done by J.M. Catell in 1885. They said that the color of letter took longer to read than the corresponding word. J.R. Stroop was looking for the effect of each dimensions by trying to name another dimension. The first important experiment made from J.R. Stroop was that he looked for people that read the written colors of the words independently with the same color they are reading. The readers were asked to say the color of the letter. This was the first test that he made. Then he made the second experiment, the purpose for this experiment was that if the word said "yellow", and the word was in red, the people tested would normally have read "red" instead of "yellow". This was all timed, J.R. Stroop noticed that people reading the word with the same color is faster than reading the word with a different color. This showed that people read and see at the same time to make it much faster. Stroop also noticed that people that are reading the word with different color takes more time, because they have to think more. They said that people before looking throught the word or color, they can already predict what is the name, it said that they don't even finish reading the word before they say it.

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The myth of multitasking

1. Why is multitasking considered by many psychologists to be a myth?
Many psychologist considered multitasking a myth, because it is probably impossible to make more than 1 thing at a time. It is impossible to focus your attention in different things. Many people think that they are really doing multitasking, but what the psychologists have determined is that people don't really multitask, but what they really do is jump from one task to another.

2. To what does the term "response selection bottleneck" refer?
The term "response selection bottleneck" refers when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once, in a result task-switching leads to time lost as the brain determines which task to perform. In other words the brain loses time switching from task to task, trying to do all the task at once.

3. David Meyer has found that multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline. Why is this important?
The psychologist David Meyer said that people can learn to task switch if they keep practicing, he also said that people can be much faster in making several task at a time. This is important because he says that when people are doing several task at a time produces stress hormones, and adrenaline, and this can cause long-term health problems, and the loss of short-term memory.

4. Explain what Russell Podrack found regarding multitasking.
Russell Podrack discovered that multitasking adversely affects how you learn. He said that even if you learn while multitasking, the learning is not to good, and more specialized. His experiments says that people use different areas of the brain for learning, and storing new information when they are distracted.

5. What does the author conclude could happen to our culture as a result of increased multitasking?
That multitasking can help but really you are not learining nothing. The author says that attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

Bambuti Pygmies

The bambuti tribe are from a region in Africa called Congo. There form of speaking comes from a Nilo Saharan phylum, but they have a lot of languages that they all understand. The bambuti tribe is one of the oldest from the region of Africa. The bambuti tribe is recognized for the small body they have. They are approximately 30,000 little people. The bambuti live in a community with groups, they have a house for every family unit. They ar every little people, and no scientist know why do their body are so small. This little people are also called hunter-gatherers, which means that they are always hunting to survive. They know many things, and they are specialized in forest. The bambuti didn't have any form of goverment. They also don't have any type of religios form, they sometimes said that the forest was their god, because it gave things to them. Collin Turnbull was a famous person from his time. He investigated the bambuti tribe, and their form of knowledge. What Collin Turnbull did was that he observed how the pygmies din't have the knowledge of what they see. He made an experiment with a bambuti pygmie, his experiment consisted on looking far away objects, the little pygmy thought that it was an ant, but really it was just a bull. When Collin Turnbull saw that this little pygmy thought that he thought it was an ant, he started to see that they didn't have the knowledge enought to know that far away object look smaller than what they really are. This study is important for the study of perception because, if you look a thing far away, is not the same as looking it closer, this was the experiment that Turnbull made with the bambuti tribe. The perception from the little people was not the same as the perception from the normal modern person.