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In order to deal with all the information the world throws at us, human brains have developed cognitive ‘shortcuts'.
为了处理世界向我们抛来的所有信息，人类的大脑已经发展出认知“捷径”。
Usually, these shortcuts are helpful, and you're totally unaware of them.
通常，这些捷径很有用，而你完全没有意识到它们。
But sometimes, they can slow you down, or even be your downfall.
但有时候，它们会让你慢下来，甚至使你垮掉。
Today on SciShow, find out how your brain can betray you.
在今天的心理科学秀节目中，看看大脑是如何背叛你的。
One of the most famous and well-studied examples of how our brains' automatic processing can trip us up is the Stroop task.
关于大脑的自动处理如何使我们出错的最著名的一项研究是Stroop任务。
Its name comes from American psychologist J.R. Stroop, who designed the test way back in the nineteen thirties.
这个研究的名字来自于美国心理学家J.R.Stroop，他早在20世纪30年代就设计了这个测试方法。
And the set up is—or seems—really simple.
而且设置看起来十分简单。
You're presented with a series of words and asked either to name the color of the ink the word is written in or simply read out the word.
你将看到一系列单词，并要求你说出单词所用的墨水颜色，或者简单地读出单词。
Easy enough, right?
很简单，对吧？
Sometimes, though, the ink is the same color as the word like, red ink for the word red.
不过，有时墨水和字的颜色相同，用红色墨水写的单词红。
This is considered a congruent trial.
这是一种一致性判定。
Other times, it isn't—like, the word red written in green.
有时，就不是一致了，比如说用绿色墨水写的单词红。
Those are incongruent trials.
这些就是不一致性判定。
And then there are neutral trials, where the word and ink color are unrelated like the word dog is, you know....it's not dog colored, I guess.
然后是中性判定，单词和墨水颜色不相关，比如单词狗，我想字不会是狗的颜色。
Stroop found that even when participants were instructed to ignore that was written and just focus on the color of the ink, it took them longer to answer during incongruent trials.
Stroop普发现，即告诉参与者忽略书写的内容，只关注墨水颜色，在不一致性判定中，他们回答问题的时间也更长。
Sometimes, they even read the word by mistake!
有时，他们甚至会误读这个单词！
That's because reading words in a language you're fluent in is an automatic process whether you like it or not, that information gets into your brain.
这是因为，无论你喜欢与否，用你流利说的语言读出单词是一个自动化的过程，这些信息会进入你的大脑。
So when the info you get from reading the word is different from the color of the ink, these two conflicting pieces of information end up fighting it out in your brain.
所以，当你从阅读中得到的信息与墨水颜色不同时，这两个不一致的信息最终会在大脑中产生冲突。
This is called interference because one cognitive process is slowing down another.
这被称为干扰，因为一个认知过程正在减慢另一个认知过程。
And this effect is so strong that some say US intelligence services used the Stroop task to spot Russian agents during the Cold War.
而且这种影响非常强烈，有人说美国情报部门在冷战期间利用Stroop任务发现了俄罗斯特工。
The idea was that these agents were pretending to be Americans, when really, they were from Russia and their first language was Russian.
他们的想法是，这些特工假装是美国人，实际上，他们是俄罗斯人，他们的第一语言是俄语。
So, the suspected spies were given the Stroop task in Russian.
因此，他们要求可疑的间谍用俄语完成Stroop任务。
People who don't speak Russian should be able to rattle off the colors of the words with ease, as they won't be tripped up by the color-word mismatches.
不会说俄语的人应该能够轻松地说出单词的颜色，因为他们不会受到墨水颜色和单词不相匹配的影响。
So, if the suspected spy was slow to answer or got tripped up by words written in Russian, the jig was up.
所以，如果可疑间谍回答速度慢或者被俄语写的词影响到了，真相就暴露了。
Of course, this would only have worked for spies that weren't supposed to know Russian.
当然，这只对那些不应该会俄语的间谍有效。
Bilingual people get Strooped in both languages they speak.
双语者用他们所说的两种语言来完成Stroop任务。
So it's probably not all that useful for detecting spies, unless you're talking, like, the deep undercover types.
因此，对于发现间谍来说，它可能并不是那么有用，除非所讨论的是极隐秘的卧底类型。
The real question, though, is why this happens at all.
但真正的问题是，为什么会发生这种情况。
You see, Stroop quickly realized interference wasn't the only thing happening.
Stroop很快意识到干扰并不是唯一正在发生的事情。
There's also facilitation—when one cognitive process helps another process along.
当一种认知过程帮助另一个过程时，也会发挥促进作用。
That occurs when multiple pieces of information complement each other or work together—like when we read the word red in red ink.
当多条信息互为补充或者像我们读用红墨水写的单词红字那样，就会发生这种情况。
And understanding how and why things interfere with or facilitate one another could explain a lot about how our brains handle information.
理解事物如何以及为什么互相干扰或互相促进，可以解释很多关于大脑如何处理信息的问题。
We have a general sense of what's happening which is to say, we know the key parts of the brain involved.
我们对正在发生的事情有一个大致的认识，也就是说，我们知道大脑参与的关键部分。
While Stroop didn't have access to neuroimaging in his time, we now know that the Stroop effect involves an interplay between a few key areas: the prefrontal cortex or PFC, the anterior cingulate cortex or ACC, and the ventral tegmental area or VTA.
虽然Stroop在他所在的时代无法进行神经成像的操作，但我们现在知道Stroop效应涉及几个关键区域之间的相互作用：前额皮质、前扣带回皮质，以及腹侧被盖区。
If you've seen our video about multitasking, you already know that this network is responsible for executive control functions: processes like working memory, planning, attention, and problem-solving.
如果你看过我们关于多任务处理的视频，你就知道这个网络负责执行控制的功能：工作记忆、计划、注意力和解决问题等过程。
With regards to the Stroop test, the prefrontal cortex is thought to be responsible for goal representation basically, what the rules of the current task are, like saying the word or saying the color.
关于Stroop测试，人们认为前额皮质基本上负责目标描述，当前任务的规则是什么，比如说单词或是字的颜色。
Meanwhile, the ACC seems to be involved in error detection.
与此同时，前扣带回皮质似乎也参与了错误检测。
You see, studies have found ACC activity is higher during incongruent trials as compared to congruent or neutral trials.
研究发现，在不一致性判定中，前扣带回皮质的活动性比一致性判定或中性判定更高。
That suggests that the ACC is essentially flagging when you're most likely to make a mistake and is probably responsible for your hesitation in answering.
这表明，当你最可能犯错误时，前扣带回皮质基本上活动性变弱，这也可能是你在回答时犹豫不决的原因。
Then, if we get it right, the VTA provides a reward in the form of good old dopamine.
如果我们正确，腹侧被盖区会用释放多巴胺的形式作为奖励。
But brain activity in certain areas doesn't really tell us as much as you'd think about how the information is being processed.
但大脑某些区域的活动，并不像你想象的那样告诉我们信息是如何处理的。
There are a number of different models that aim to explain that, none of which are perfect.
有许多不同的模型旨在解释这一点，但没有一种是完美的。
For example, there's the Parallel Distributed Processing model, which became popular in the late nineteen seventies to early nineteen eighties.
例如，有一个并行分布式处理模型，它在70年代末到80年代初很流行。
It imagines the brain much like a computer network, with different cognitive processes, like word reading and color identification, occurring in parallel.
这种模型把大脑想象成一个计算机网络，拥有不同的认知过程，如单词阅读和颜色识别，这些认知过程同时发生。
The path with the strongest activation is the one that ends up prevailing and that's naturally reading, because we spend so much time learning how to do it and doing it, while we don't tend to spend as much of our lives pointing out the colors of things.
最活跃的通路也是最为普遍的一种，那就是阅读，因为我们花了太多时间学习如何阅读，并这样去做，但我们并未花那么多时间指出事物的颜色。
Other models posit that it's not the strength of a given pathway, but rather the speed at which a process occurs and that we read faster than we ID color, basically.
其他模型假定，这不是一个给定路径的强度，而是一个过程发生的速度。基本上，我们阅读的速度比识别颜色的速度快。
And still others argue that word-reading simply doesn't take the same amount of focused attention as color-naming.
还有一些人认为，读单词并不像命名颜色那样消耗同样的关注度。
But none of these seem to line up with perfectly with what's happening in the brain.
但这些似乎都与大脑中发生的事情不太相符。
That's why more recent methods for understanding the Stroop effect include developing artificial networks to mimic what's going on.
这就是为什么最近研究Stroop效应的方法包含了开发人工网络来模拟正在发生的事情。
Basically, researchers are trying to write a computer program that responds to the Stroop task in the same way humans do, which could help connect the neuroanatomy and the proposed models.
大体来说，研究人员正试图编写一个计算机程序，让它能够与人类相同的方式响应Stroop任务，这有助于把神经解剖和所提出的模型相联结。
Because one thing we know for sure is that all this is hardwired into your brain.
因为有一件事我们确信，所有这些都是预设在大脑中的。
You can't see the word green written in red and just totally ignore the word itself.
你看不到用红色墨水写的单词绿字，而完全忽略了这个词本身。
But...you might be able to hack these processes a bit.
但是，你也许可以对这些过程进行非法攻击。
You see, different people experience different degrees of this effect.
不同的人对这种影响的反应程度也不同。
People who struggle with impulse control in general are more susceptible to the Stroop effect than others, for example.上
例如，有冲动控制问题的人通常比其他人更容易受到Stroop效应的影响。
And there are definitely things that will make you worse, like intoxication.
当然，还有一些事情会让你感觉更糟糕，比如醉酒。
News alert: being drunk makes you bad at a lot of things, especially impulse control.
提醒你一下，醉酒会让你在很多事情上表现不佳，尤其是在冲动控制方面。
There are ways to get better at the Stroop task, too.
还有一些可以在Stroop任务中表现更好的方法。
Practice does improve performance, for example, so you might be able to get a little bit faster.
例如，练习确实可以提高成绩，可能会让你反应更快一些。
But you'll probably never be perfect… unless you undergo hypnosis, apparently.
但很显然，除非对你催眠，否则你可能永远不会做得完美。
You see, one 2002 study found that when put under hypnosis, some people could master the Stroop task by becoming convinced that the totally real and normal English words they were presented, were gibberish.
2002年的一项研究发现，处于催眠状态时，有些人可以通过使自己认为，呈现给他们的那些英语单词都是胡言乱语，以此来掌握Stroop的任务。
Which, along with being pretty spooky, provides evidence that at least some automatic processes, like reading, can be overcome.
这也证明了至少某些自动化过程，如阅读，能够受到影响，这听起来相当吓人。
There's just a lot we still don't understand about how and why our brains do the things they do every day.
对于大脑如何以及为什么每天都做那些事情，我们还有很多的不解。
And that's why researchers are still using this super old test because even after almost a century, it's still revealing the fundamentals of how our brains work.
这就是研究人员仍然在用这个古老测试的原因，因为即使在近一个世纪之后，它还是能够揭示出大脑工作的基本原理。
And you can see how you do with the Stroop task, because it's one of the experiments in our Universe Unboxed Sensory Science kit!
你们可以看看自己如何完成Stroop任务，它是我们的宇宙感官科学工具包的一个试验！
Universe Unboxed is SciShow's very own line of science experiment kits for kids elementary school-aged and older.
这个工具包是我们科学秀节目出品的产品，适用于小学及以上年龄的儿童。
They're packed with all sorts of fun experiments which teach specific science concepts.
里面有各种有趣的试验，教授特定的科学概念。
Each also has a video demonstration, starring me, so you can see how it's done and guess what happened before you learn the science behind them.
每个试验都有一个视频演示，由我主持。所以你们可以看到实验是如何完成的，并在学习它们背后的科学依据之前猜测将会发生什么。
And in the Sensory Science kit, there's a Stroop task that you can do right at home, since it teaches us a lot about how our brains process visual information.
在这套试验中，有一个可以在家中完成的Stroop任务，它教会了我们很多关于大脑如何处理视觉信息的知识。
You can even see how I did by watching the accompanying video!
你可以通过观看附带的视频看看我是怎么操作的！
Hint: not great.
提示：不太好。
In addition to explaining the experiments, we also explain how scientists actually use the scientific concepts you're learning in the real world.
除了解释试验之外，我们还解释了科学家如何实际运用你在现实世界中学到的科学概念。
So you're not only learning how science works, you're learning why it matters, just like you do when you watch SciShow episodes like this one.
你不仅能学习科学是如何运作的，还能学习为什么它很重要，就像你们观看这集科学秀节目一样。
To buy one of these kits for yourself or your favorite kid, or to find them in a store near you, check out UniverseUnboxed.com.
要为自己或最爱的孩子购买这套工具包，或想在附近商店中找到它们，请访问UniverseUnboxed.com。
