Using the oral and manual Stroop tasks we tested the claim that retrieval of meaning from a written word is automatic, in the sense that it cannot be controlled. The semantic interference effect (greater interference caused by color-related words than color-neutral words) was used as the index of semantic activation. To manipulate the level of…

Dual route models of reading suggest there are 2 pathways for reading words: an orthographic-lexical pathway, used to read familiar regular words and exception words, and a grapheme-to-phoneme-conversion-(GPC)-sublexical pathway, used to read unfamiliar regular words, pseudohomophones (PHs), and nonwords. It is unclear, however, whether PHs…

The Stroop color-word test involves a conflict situation in which subjects are asked to say aloud the ink color used to print a color word on a card. Interference occurs when the ink color is in conflict with the color word, such as 'red' printed in green ink. On the other hand, little interference occurs when asked to name the color words…