Do you want to improve your concentration and cognition skills? Want the training to be fun but still challenging? Have options to customize the gaming experience to provide a slightly different type of a challenge? Do you also like to get feedback after each session to know how you have done?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, GreenRed is a game for you! Available on AppStore.
GreenRed is based on a cognitive phenomenon called Stroop effect. In layman’s terms this means, that when people are asked to name shown colors, if linguistic and visual input are not aligned, naming the colors takes longer.
In GreenRed game you are shown colored words. Basically these are color names printed with different colors. Your task is to name the print color as fast as possible by tapping a button which has the correct color name as the title. The color names and print colors can be mismatched, meaning that for example color name “Green” can be printed in red color.
Here, in the example, the correct option is to tap the button on the left stating “Red” (that word matches the color of the word at the top).
After each game session lasting few tens of seconds you are offered feedback of that session. The game displays a reaction time graph, some statistics of the session, as well as some guidance to improve your results.
GreenRed game allows you to customize the gaming experience. You can choose different length for your game sessions, from 10 seconds up to two minutes. If staying focused on the game during longer session feels too hard, you can shorten the session length and build your concentration from ground up.
You can also change the color palette used in the game. The default colors are red and green, but there are also number of other color options available. For example color blind people might prefer playing the game with color pairs like blue-orange or blue-red. Let us know if you want to have different color options available.
For multilingual users the game offers possibilities to play the game using one the six available languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Finnish). You can try if your cognition is faster in your native tongue than with your secondary languages. And why not try learning color names in a new language? You might find that you are faster when using a language you are not familiar with!
To allow you to keep track of your progress, the game saves your high scores for each language and session length. Happy playing!
Free, ad-supported game
App Rating: Ages 4+
Available for iPhones with iOS 13.2 and above
Privacy policy of GreenRed
The effect is named after John Ridley Stroop, who first published the effect in English in 1935. Although there are some earlier papers published in other languages. In experimental psychology Stroop’s paper has been cited a lot.
Stroop effect is used as a basis of a number of psychological tests, measuring person’s selective attention capacity and skills, processing speed ability, executive processing (i.e. cognitive control) abilities, and it can also help to diagnose different psychiatric and neurological disorders.
Some studies claim that when one trains to decrease the Stroop effect, this has implications for our learning skills, ability to multitask, and how we form habits. Training with Stroop can also improve person’s cognitive function, and there are also claims that this could improve concentration during athletic performances.
Finally, Stroop effect testing can be used pre-exercise to induce mental fatigue to allow simulating more challenging situation during training.