No conclusive evidence that difficult general knowledge questions cause a Google Stroop effect. A replication study
Hesselmann set out to test one of the two findings from the well-known study on internet use and memory: the claim that being asked a hard factual question automatically brings the idea of the internet to mind, measured by how much slower people are to name the colour of internet-related words. Two earlier replication attempts, part of a large replication project, had failed to find it, and the original author had objected that their designs differed from his. So this study was built to sit closer to the original experiment, which is what makes it worth citing rather than either of the earlier failures. The result was no conclusive evidence for the effect. Asking people difficult trivia questions did not detectably activate thoughts of the internet, whether the route to it was a computer or a phone. The paper recommends how follow-up work should proceed rather than declaring the question closed. This vault cites it whenever the original finding is invoked.
Hesselmann set out to test one of the two findings from the well-known study on internet use and memory: the claim that being asked a hard factual question automatically brings the idea of the internet to mind, measured by how much slower people are to name the colour of internet-related words. Two earlier replication attempts, part of a large replication project, had failed to find it, and the original author had objected that their designs differed from his. So this study was built to sit closer to the original experiment, which is what makes it worth citing rather than either of the earlier failures. The result was no conclusive evidence for the effect. Asking people difficult trivia questions did not detectably activate thoughts of the internet, whether the route to it was a computer or a phone. The paper recommends how follow-up work should proceed rather than declaring the question closed. This vault cites it whenever the original finding is invoked.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Hesselmann, F. et al. (2020). “No conclusive evidence that difficult general knowledge questions cause a ‘Google Stroop effect’. A replication study.” PeerJ, 8:e10325. Built to the original author's own suggested improvements; also null.
Where we use it
- Both Sides of the Screen-Time Argument, Why We Look
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10325
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.10325