No conclusive evidence that difficult general knowledge questions cause a "Google Stroop effect". A replication study.

ABSTRACT: Access to the digital "all-knowing cloud" has become an integral part of our daily lives. It has been suggested that the increasing offloading of information and information processing services to the cloud will alter human cognition and metacognition in the short and long term. A much-cited study published in Science in 2011 provided first behavioral evidence for such changes in human cognition. Participants had to answer difficult trivia questions, and subsequently showed longer response times in a variant of the Stroop task with internet-related words ("Google Stroop effect"). The authors of this study concluded that the concept of the Internet is automatically activated in situations where information is missing (e.g., because we might feel the urge to "google" the information).

SUBMITTER: Hesselmann G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7651475 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature