Missing the obvious
I was watching my brother play a game in which he had to call out the colour of the word such as the one above as fast as he can. The challenge is that you override the impulse to call out the word. So it turns out that reading is faster than making sense of the colour which seems like the obvious thing. I was wondering how that works?
The longer reaction time that takes place in order for people to call out the correct colour is known as the Stroop effect. Apparently it is used to assess mental abilities such as to measure selective attention, cognitive flexibility and processing speed. The reading process is automated while making sense of the colour requires more thinking and this requires some attention to override the automatic process. So if a person does can not read then he/she will do better by calling out the correct colour faster and a fast reader will need more time to forget about the righting and focus on the simplicity of colour. A fine example when your education gets in the way and makes you miss the obvious 
