Thoughts- Stroop Effect & Spies

 Ridheiy and I were discussing a few events for TEDxHyderabad@Youth. "Shall we try out this game. There'll be words of colours in different colours. We ask the participants to call out the colour names but not the words."  "That's called the Stroop effect. I studied it," she said.  "Stroop effect? Whatever. That's the game." I replied. 

We bounced off with a lot of ideas but, learning that the game has a name, "Stroop effect," was with me for a long time. I was reading about attention and I read about how the Stroop effect helps people to identify spies. 

Stroop effect and Spies. I was attentive. 

Russian spies, staying in the US used to claim that they do not know the Russian language at all. They'd be asked to take the Stroop effect test. In the test, If they know the Russian language, they'd be slow in reading out the colours. If they do not know, they would blurt out the words, "Yellow. Blue." Interesting to hear how Spies were identified in the 80s