About Color Confusion
Color Confusion shows a colour word, such as BLUE, printed in a different colour of ink. Your job is to tap the colour of the ink, not the colour the word names. You have 45 seconds, and wrong answers take points away.
How to play
- Press Start to begin a 45-second round. A colour word appears in large letters with five coloured buttons below it.
- The five colours are red, blue, green, yellow and purple. Tap the button matching the ink the word is printed in.
- A correct tap scores one point. A wrong tap takes one point away, though your score never drops below zero.
- Most of the time the word and the ink do not match. Occasionally they do, so do not assume the answer is always the other colour.
- The order of the coloured buttons is shuffled for every question, so you cannot rely on a fixed position.
- When the time runs out your score is final. The timer pauses during ad breaks.
Controls
- Mouse: click the coloured circle that matches the ink.
- Touch: tap the coloured circle that matches the ink.
- There are no keyboard shortcuts.
Tips and strategy
- Let your eyes go slightly unfocused on the word, or look at the bottom edge of the letters. It is easier to notice colour when you are not reading.
- Name the ink colour to yourself before you look for its button. Then find the button by colour, since its position changes every time.
- Do not rush into errors. Each wrong tap undoes a correct one, so a steady pace with high accuracy beats frantic tapping.
- Watch for the occasional question where word and ink agree. If you have trained yourself to look away from the word, those can catch you out.
- Purple and blue are the easiest pair to mix up; give them a fraction of a second longer.
Background
This game is based on the Stroop effect, first described by the American psychologist John Ridley Stroop in 1935. He found that people take longer to name the ink colour of a word when the word itself names a different colour. The usual explanation is that reading is so practised that it happens automatically, and the brain has to suppress the word to report the ink. The Stroop task is one of the most widely used tests in psychology for studying attention and the ability to override an automatic response.
Questions
- Do wrong answers cost points?
- Yes, one point each, but your score never goes below zero. This stops random tapping from paying off.
- Can the word and the ink ever be the same colour?
- Yes, occasionally. In those cases the ink colour is still the correct answer.
- How long is a round?
- 45 seconds. The countdown pauses if an ad break appears.