Separating Speed from Automaticity in a Patient with Focal Brain Atrophy

Automatic processes are characterized as being rapid, as requiring little attentional effort, and as obligatory (once initiated, the activity cannot be inhibited or controlled). In contrast, controlled processes are slower, require attention, and are non-obligatory. This distinction appears in the Stroop effect: the interference that appears when a person tries to name the color of the ink in which a word is printed when the word spells the name of a different color. This effect has historically been attributed to an automatic reading of the color name interfering with the slower, less automatic, naming of the ink color (MacLeod, 1991; Stroop, 1935). In this report, we describe a patient with focal brain atrophy whose speed of reading was no faster than his speed of naming colors, but who still showed the classic Stroop effect. This finding critically challenges the traditional identification of automaticity with processing speed.