Can Executive Function Tests Reveal Your Mother Tongue (or Expose Spies?)

Indeed, the famous “Stroop Effect” is not only commonly used today to measure a person’s reaction time when performing a task, but was employed by US interrogators during the Cold War to identify native Russian speakers living in the States and suspected of being spies.

Published by John Ridley Stroop back in1935, the Stroop Effect is the basis behind various exercises requiring you to identify and match written names of colors which may not match the actual color of the text. For instance, the word ‘blue’ may be presented in written form, but appear in red print, thus demanding more time for you to decide on the correct answer. The likelihood of you answering incorrectly also increases as the exercises become more difficult. The results from these tests can actually determine a person’s true native language.

Boost Your Executive Functions

Mind360’s new brain training game, Joe’s Bar, is an excellent tool designed by cognitive scientists and based on the Stroop Effect to help users increase their decision-making speed. This key cognitive skill is categorized as an Executive Function and is called upon throughout our daily lives to make important decisions concerning everything from driving a car to dealing with any number of stressful situations.

Stay tuned for the soon-to-be-released Joe’s Bar, a free (and fun) brain training game designed to help you dramatically improve your decision making skills.

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.