One’s Innate Tendency to Read Words
Saipriya Sagiraju
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract
Directed attention is a mechanism used by humans every day to manage their thoughts by inhibiting a stimuli in order to say or do something else; this tendency is also known as the Stroop effect. To test the effects of the Stroop task we conducted an experiment to examine if words on silhouettes have an effect on the reaction time of verbalizing the names of the animals on a silhouette sheet. We hypothesized that reaction time would be higher in the no label condition than the incongruent label condition. To test our hypothesis we used a repeated measures design and conducted out analyses using a paired sample t test. Additionally, the results …show more content…
Therefore, we hypothesize that participants took a longer time reading the incongruent label sheet verses the no label sheet.
Methods
Participants
The participants for this study were undergraduate students taking Psychology 241 this fall 2015 semester. 18 students in total partook in the study; majority being female ranging from ages 18-22.
Materials
The experiment required a Stopwatch, a sheet containing silhouettes with no label, a sheet containing silhouettes with incongruent labels, and a researchers’ labeling sheet. The first sheet contained silhouettes of five animals with no labels, the second contained silhouettes of five animals with incongruent labels, and the third sheet was for the researcher to record the time, number of errors, and sex of their participants. Additionally, before we got started with the experiment each student had to randomly pick a small sheet of paper, which contained their number and the order of their independent variables. The students either got NL INL (No Label then Incongruent Label) or INL NL (Incongruent label then No Label), so that it was randomized and distributed evenly throughout the room.
Saipriya Sagiraju
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract
Directed attention is a mechanism used by humans every day to manage their thoughts by inhibiting a stimuli in order to say or do something else; this tendency is also known as the Stroop effect. To test the effects of the Stroop task we conducted an experiment to examine if words on silhouettes have an effect on the reaction time of verbalizing the names of the animals on a silhouette sheet. We hypothesized that reaction time would be higher in the no label condition than the incongruent label condition. To test our hypothesis we used a repeated measures design and conducted out analyses using a paired sample t test. Additionally, the results …show more content…
Therefore, we hypothesize that participants took a longer time reading the incongruent label sheet verses the no label sheet.
Methods
Participants
The participants for this study were undergraduate students taking Psychology 241 this fall 2015 semester. 18 students in total partook in the study; majority being female ranging from ages 18-22.
Materials
The experiment required a Stopwatch, a sheet containing silhouettes with no label, a sheet containing silhouettes with incongruent labels, and a researchers’ labeling sheet. The first sheet contained silhouettes of five animals with no labels, the second contained silhouettes of five animals with incongruent labels, and the third sheet was for the researcher to record the time, number of errors, and sex of their participants. Additionally, before we got started with the experiment each student had to randomly pick a small sheet of paper, which contained their number and the order of their independent variables. The students either got NL INL (No Label then Incongruent Label) or INL NL (Incongruent label then No Label), so that it was randomized and distributed evenly throughout the room.