Abstract: Both normal and deaf-mute subjects were recruited to participate inthe experiment in order to explore the generality of the Stroop pheno-menon. Four Chinese characters: "red", "yellow ", "green" and "blue", eachwritten in the three colors other than the color delloted by the worditself, were exposed to the subjects who were asked to respond byidentifying the character or the color according to the instructions. Inone situation, the instruction was given before the stimulus wasdisplayed. In other situations, the instruction was given after exposureof the stimulus, allowing different lengths of time in between. The results show: 1. There is no significant difference in the perfor-mance of the color-word interference task between the normal subjectsand the deaf-mute subjects, which reveals the generality of the auto-matic semantic processing. 2. The subjects' performance can beimproved by selective attention, but the color-naming task is harderthan the word-reading task. 3. The Stroop effect varies with the lengthof delay in giving the instruction, which suggests that the Stroop effectmay be connected with the memory process.

Key words: NULL