IDENTIFIERS *Stroop Effect

This study investigated the Stroop effect with deaf and hearing bilingual individuals and whether there is a positive relationship between the Stroop effect and English language proficiency of deaf bilinguals. The Stroop effect refers to the interference caused by incmigruent semantic information in naming colors (e.g., when subjects must name the ink color of the word "red" printed in green ink). Subjects were 16 congenitally, severe to profoundly deaf American college students who were fluent in sign language. In addition eight hearing fluent signers were also tested. The response times and accuracy on a color-word matching task were evaluated. Both deaf and hearing signers showed the expected general Stroop effect. However, deaf signers were better than hearing signers in suppressing interference created by incongruent lexical information. The magnitude of the Stroop effect was not related to English reading skills in deaf Ftudents. (DB) ***********************************************k*********************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document