Highly practiced and familiar stimuli, such as our your own name or where you are from, often are perceived so automatically it is almost impossible to ignore them. The Stroop Effect is an example of automatic perception in which it is difficult to name the colors in which words are printed when the actual words refer to different colors. In most instances, the highly practiced and almost automatic perception of word meaning makes reading easier. However, this same automaticity makes it hard to ignore the meaning of the colors (such as yellow) when they are printed in a different color (such as green). Thus, the Stroop effect represents a failure of selective attention.