The Stroop Effect is the difficultly people have when trying to name a color when it’s used to spell the name of a different color. For example, when blue ink is used to print the word “red” it takes longer for people to register that the correct term they should be saying is “blue” as opposed to when the word is inked in the same color as its corresponding word (like red text that says “red”). 

The Stroop Effect

- Because hue is metathetic variable, variations in hue aren’t seen automatically as signaling different amounts of a quantity. 
- Animation interferes with comprehension if it does not fit the natural movements of the object (for example, a picture of a car should not drop down from the top), and sounds and slide backgrounds will interfere if they are not appropriate for the topic (the sounds of birds chirping, isn’t compatible with a presentation about exercising in a gym).
- Viewers most easily interpret icons that depict the typical examples of represented items. For example, a picture of a duck effectively illustrates “waterfowl” but not “domesticated bird,”.
- Old-fashioned looking font would send a conflicting message if used in a high-tech device. 	
- Because they make different sorts of information explicit, different sorts of graphics are appropriate for making different points. Line graphs (as opposed to a bar or mixed graph) illustrate trends effectively because the continuous variation in the height of a line in a graph directly indicates the continuous variations of a measurement. Charts effectively illustrate organizational structure, a sequence of steps, or processes over time (“flow charts”). 

The Principle of Compatibility’s Corollaries 

The P.C. states that a message is easiest to understand if its form is compatible with its meaning. This principle is most commonly seen through the “Stroop Effect”. 

Ohio State University, Columbus

Task analysis leads us to posit a third class of relevant processes. Encoding information and integrating it appropriately wouldn’t be useful if the meaning of the material wasn’t understood. In order to create meaning from the stimuli, it must be compared to previously stored information in the long-term memory. Through retrieval, we can comprehend the imported information. The follow three principles address accessing long-term memory, and relevant stored information: Appropriate Knowledge, Compatibility, and Relevance.

Accessing Long-Term Memory

Kosslyn, S. M., Kievit, R. A., Russell, A. G., & Shephard, J. M. (2012, July 17). PowerPoint® Presentation Flaws and failures: A psychological analysis. Frontiers. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00230/full 

PowerPoint® Presentation Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis

The P.A.K. states that communication requires prior knowledge of relevant concepts, jargon, and symbols. If a presenter relies on terminology that the audience isn’t familiar with, the audience will fail to understand and retain information. 

The Principle of Appropriate Knowledge 

The Principle of Compatibility 

The P.R. states that communication is done most effectively when neither too much, nor too little information is presented. It entails the search for a balance of the two. 

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