I think the idea is that you're reading out the color of the printed word, not the word itself (despite the fact that the word is the name of a different color)

I think the idea is that you're reading out the color of the printed word, not the word itself (despite the fact that the word is the name of a different color). So you might have, in a red font, the word "blue", followed by the word "green" in yellow letters. The correct response is to say out loud "red, yellow". This is hard to do when the words are in your native language. So if the words are in Russian, it's an easier task for someone who doesn't read that language, because they aren't distracted by the meaning of the word and can just see the colors. See the example on the wiki page for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect