Investigation on a variation of the Stroop test

Investigation on a variation of the Stroop testThe role of self-activating and controlled bear on was examined in an sample looking at the allocation of impact resources amongst the dickens. Previous research put up that when a joint is pen in the equivalent ink as the act uponise the word denotes, it takes recollectiveer to state the colour of these manner of speaking than if the haggling are colour neutral i.e. not the name of a colour. In the donation experiment the type of word used was manipulated, between colour associated and colour neutral words. The results showed that there was a significant digression between the completion times of the two assures which provided further support for the idea that automatic processes can interfere with controlled angiotensin-converting enzyme and only(a)s.IntroductionThe cognitive process of attention is said by psychologists to be how an individual processes the information that they receive from their day to day env ironment and how it is selected to be stored. That is to say that not all information that we obtain from daily livelihood is seen as important for storage, it is essentially a selection process in which the most relevant information is chosen to be retained. William James(1890) mootd attention to be dependent upon an allocation of cognitive processing resources(James,(1890),p9). The idea that all actions implore the use of processing resources to some extent, and is reliant upon the amount of resources available to an individual is known as a controlled process. Up until more(prenominal) recent years it was believe that no demand was placed upon these resources when the processes were automatic i.e. occurring without conscious awareness. These automatic responses were thought to use up less processing resources due to the lack of conscious effort involved, thus leaving resources free to attend to other stimuli. Thus essentially attentional processing has to be divided between th e two. This was termed the two-process theory by Shiffrin and Schneider((1977),p21).Researchers felt that this appeared to be a very useful concept as essentially it would leave more resources free notwithstanding were interested to see at what cost. J.R. Stroop(1935) was one of these researchers(Stroop(1935),p21). He carried out an experiment into the relationship between automatic and controlled processes. This consisted of two conditions, in one thespians were given a put of colour name words written in coloured ink but never matched to the colour ink they were written in. e.g. the word yellow written in blue ink. This is known as the Stroop condition. In the other the players were given a set of neutral words e.g. the word rat all written in the very(prenominal) colour inks as in the previous condition. The participants were indispensable to name the colour ink in which the words were written as fast as likely. It was found that participants could state the colour of the w ords in the neutral condition more rapidly than in the Stroop condition, prima(p) Stroop to conclude that people are inclined to read the colour the word is portraying rather than the one it is written in. This is said by Stroop to suggest that the automatic process of reading can hinder the controlled process of naming the ink. It also shows that automatic processes are not necessarily free as researchers once believe and can on fact be influenced by conscious strategies such as naming the colour in which the word is written.Many variations of the Stroop test redeem been carried out since the original to further test individuals attention and the allocation of resources in both controlled and automatic processing. One such variation is the reverse Stroop test.(Wikipedia) In this experiment there were still two conditions one where the participant was given a list of colour words and had to point to a block of colour which matched the colour word stated. The second condition was t he same as in the original Stroop test where the colour ink the word was written in had to be stated. It was found that it took on average 7 seconds longer to state the colours of the words aloud than it did to simply point to a block of colour that matched it. It was concluded that when the colour of the word stated differed from the colour ink it was written it the automatic process of reading the word again interferes with the controlled process of naming the ink colour. It was also observe that this can be controlled but that then a time delay is incurred.This idea that automatic processes do rely on resources just like controlled process, but that they occur without conscious awareness is still open to debate as despite the vast amounts of research done on this topic it still dust to be seen if the Stroop effect only occurs with colour words. The idea that it is not only colour words that cause an integration between automatic and controlled processes is explored in the prese nt experiment, by testing a set of colour- related words against a set of non-colour related words rather than a collection of coloured words printed in either black ink or opponent colours. The hypothesis was that people take longer to state the colour ink in which 30 words are written when the words are colour- associated words rather than colour-neutral words. This is a one-tailed hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that there go out be no difference in the time taken to state the words in each condition, and if there is it is due to chance.MethodsDesignThe design of this experiment was within-participants as the same set of participants were used to acquire the data in both conditions. The independent variable was the colour associated words. This consisted of two conditions, a colour associated word condition (condition 1) and a non-colour associated condition (condition 2). In the colour associated condition (condition 1), participants were timed to see how long it took them t o state the colour ink of 30 colour associated words when written in opposing colours. E.g. plum written in orange. In the second condition the same procedure was followed but with the participants stating the colour ink of non-colour associated words. E.g. plan written in blue. The dependent variable was the time taken to complete each task, measured with a stopwatch to the nearest second. Several things were done to try and control for any bedevil variables. Firstly, all participants were given the same set of instructions in order to prevent them gaining a different interpretation of what was being expected of them. Another thing that was done was to ensure that none of the participants could confer during the time in which the experiment was taking place, thus helping to prevent them from incurring demand characteristics. Participants also took the two conditions in different orders to help control for practice effects. Finally, all participants were shown the exact same copie s of the stimuli which made it easier to ensure that this is not a reason for any differences that whitethorn be possessed of occurred.ParticipantsTwenty five participants took part in this experiment. 16 of these were recruited by a researcher at the Open University and consisted of their friends and family. The other 9 were recruited through postulation friends and family of the researcher. The age of the participants ranged from 17 to 69 and was made up of 12 males and 13 females.MaterialsA stopwatch accurate to the nearest second was used to time how long it took each participant to state the colour the words were written in. The visual stimuli presented in each condition consisted of 30 words placed into two columns on an A4 piece of paper. For condition 1 these consisted of 6 different words (blood,plum,carrot,sky,grass and lemon) written in 6 different colours (red,orange,blue,green,yellow,and purple). The word was never written in the correct colour i.e. sky would never be blue. In the second condition a different set of 6 words was used (plan,sty,ledge,grade,career and blame). These were written in the same 6 colours as the words in condition 1. In each condition each word was used 5 times and presented in a random order. A set of each stimuli is shown in the appendicies (appendix 1). A set of standardized instructions was also used to condone what was required of each participant (appendix 2). Finally each participant was required to complete a consent form before carrying out the tasks (appendix 3).ProceduresEach participant was asked if they would be willing to take part in a psychology experiment looking at cognitive processes, that would take about 5 proceeding of their time. The ones who agreed to were given a consent form to fill in stating that they were willing to take part. They were then tested one at a time with their age and gender being recorded before being read the instructions as to how the experiment would work. i.e. that they wou ld be shown a list of words and were required to state the colour the word was written in whilst being timed to state all 30 colours. They were also told that there would be two conditions and that the same procedure was required for each. (instructions appendix 2). Once all of this was understood and the participant had asked anything they wanted to they were given the words for condition 1. The stopwatch was started as they stated the first of all colour and stopped after they had stated the 30th. This time was recorded in the same table as used to record the participants age and gender prior in the experiment.. The same was then repeated for condition 2 and the time recorded. The order in which the participants carried out the two conditions varied. Once all of this was completed the participant was given a debrief about the nature of the experiment and asked if they wanted to ask anything or needed anything. They were also made aware again of their repair to withdraw at any p oint after the experiment should they decide they are uncomfortable with their data being use, and of the fact that their data would remain nameless should they allow it to be used.ResultsThe one-tailed research hypothesis was that people take longer to state the colour ink in which 30 words are written, when the words are colour- associated words rather than colour-neutral words. This was measured with a stopwatch accurate to the nearest second (appendix 4 raw data).Table 1-Paired -Samples T-test dataMeanNStd. DeviationStd. Error MeanPair 1Colour associated words25.6190214.954561.08117Colour-neutral words22.9048213.94848.86163As can be seen from table 1 above, the mean response time for the two conditions was fairly different with the mean for the colour- associated words being 2.7 seconds slower than the speed for the colour-neutral words. This difference can further be seen from the error bar chart below(graph 1).Graph 1 shows that we can have 95% confidence that the population mean for condition 1 (the colour associated words) will lie within -1.08117 x 1.96 = 2.12Therefore the lower define is 25.62-2.12= 23.50 secondsUpper bound is 25.62+2.12=27.74 secondsOr 25.6 2 2.12 secondsGraph 1 also shows that we can have 95% confidence that the population mean for condition 2 (the colour neutral words) will lie within -.86163 x 1.96 = 1.69Therefore the lower bound is 22.9 1.69 = 21.21 secondsUpper bound is 22.9 + 1.69 = 24.59 secondsOr 22.9 1.69secondsTherefore, although it appears from the experiment that when condition 2 is used the individuals can read the words more apace, this cannot be confirmed with any confidence. It is possible that in reality that condition 1 could result in those being test reading the words than under condition 2. For example, if the real mean of the exclusively population is towards the upper bound for condition 2 and towards the lower bound for condition 1, the individuals will be able to complete the test more quickly under co ndition 1.if there was no overlap between the bounds for each condition it would have been possible to say with 95% confidence that one condition allowed the individuals to complete the test more quickly.A paired t-test was conducted on the data which showed that (t(30)=4.214p=