Dese212_Tma03

Abstract Automatic processing is information already learnt and activated without conscious awareness and without inference with other conscious activity that may be going on at the same time. A series of studies using reaction times draws on these concepts in the form of automatic detection. Previous research found a large increase in the time taken by participants in completing a colour reading task. This was explained by the automation of reading where the mind automatically determined the meaning of word. These results have been used to investigate psychological capacities and processing speed. In the current experiment interference of a congruent stimuli was employed. The results showed that difference in response did have significant effect on response times providing further support for there being some sort of automatic processing. Introduction The idea of attention is selective cognitive processing of an aspect of the environment and the allocation of processing resources. This implies that non-selected information is ignored or not ‘attended to’. This notion was supported by the experiment conducted by Simons and Levin (1998) which illustrated a phenomenon referred to as ‘change blindness’, from which people failed to notice a change in person during the study. This provided insight that not all information is taken in or consciously observed to all stimuli. This was embodied by Kahneman (1973) who suggested that we have limited amount of resource to process and analyse incoming information then adding it to information already held in memory. These processes are known as controlled processes that use conscious control in processing. However the theory does not explain how sometimes it is possible to do two things at once which led to the development of two-process theories. Through a series of experiments led by Schneider and Shiffrin (1977), exposed a distinction between conscious and unconscious controlled processing and looked into the notion of automatic processing. Unconscious tasks that are performed automatically are said to require less mental effort and can help to save some of the brains processing resources enabling us to do other things at the same time. However, sometimes rather than being helpful, interference can occur and effect the process. Schneider and Shiffrin demonstrated a classic phenomenon of interference known as the Stroop effect (Stroop, 1938). The Stroop effect experiment was a visual test of demonstrating the reaction time of recalling the names of an ink colour. A list of colours were written in different coloured ink and when the name of a colour e.g. blue, green, yellow was written it was printed in a colour not denoted by the name e.g. the word blue printed in green. Naming the colour resulted in longer response time than when the colour matched the name of the colour. This suggested the interference was explained by the automation of reading where the mind tried to automatically determine the meaning of the word as this information had already been learnt and stored. The Stroop effect theorised that if someone is given a list of words which have two conflicting pieces of information the participant will experience a delay in reaction time as the brain is trying to suppress the input from the printed words in order to focus on the colour of the words. The following experiment was to use a modified variation of the Stroop effect using colour-related words to establish if these words would also interfere the process of recall. This was to discover whether the results would correspond and participants would find it harder to name what colour ink a word was written in if the word was the name of a colour associated with the words. The research hypothesis was that the length of time taken for participants to name the set of congruent words will be greater than the length of time taken to name the set of incongruent words. This is a one-tailed hypothesis. The null hypothesis was there will be no difference in the length of time taken to complete the two tasks. Method Design A within-participant design was employed which helped controlled individual differences and required less participants. The independent variable was consistent of two conditions each participant taking part in both. ‘Condition one’ the congruent colour-related words list and ‘condition two’ the incongruent colour words list. The dependant variable was the time taken to name the colour each word was printed in and was recorded in both conditions. This was measured to the nearest second by the researcher using a stopwatch function on a mobile phone. To control any differences in the way certain words are perceived the colour-neutral words resembled the colour-related words using words which had the same number of letters and all starting with the same two letters. Each word also appeared in the list five times and was printed in each of the same colours as their corresponding colour-related word. In addition, as the experiment was a within-participant design, in order to prevent order effect, counterbalancing was carried out. The data recorded in odd numbered rows (e.g. 1,3,5, etc.) participants were asked to complete condition one first followed by condition two and the even rows (e.g. 2,4,6,etc.) participants were to complete condition two first followed by condition one (ten participants doing condition one first and ten participants doing condition two first). These were also to overcome the notion of practiced learning. Participants Sixteen of the participants were recruited amongst colleagues at The Open University, or their family members or friends. Four of the participants were recruited by asking for volunteers amongst colleagues of the researcher. The age of the participants ranged from eighteen to sixty-nine years and were thirteen females and seven men. Informed consent (see Appendix 1) was obtained before the start of the study and where possible all aspects of the research were made available to participants along with the right to withdrawal, during or after the study. In order to prevent participants from psychological harm the participants were debriefed as pressure of having to carry out the task as quickly as they could may have caused stress to some participants. The debrief of the study explained the nature of automatic processing and the differences between the two conditions. Participants were made aware that information about them including the data collected during the study was to be kept confidential and anonymous. Materials The visual stimuli (see Appendix 2) used in both conditions was different sets of eight words repeated five times, with each of the repeated words printed in a different colour (e.g. five different colours). Although each list contained different words the colours and the order of which the colours appeared were the same in both conditions. A device used in the experiment was a HTC mobile phone which used the stopwatch function to record in seconds how it took each participant to complete both tasks. A response sheet (Table 2) was also used to record the information (see Appendix 3). Procedure In order to keep the procedures similar between participants, the following steps were taken in conducting the research. Each participant was approached by asking if they would be prepared to take part in a cognitive psychology experiment, which would take no longer than five minutes. All participants who agreed was notified about the consent form, debriefing, right to withdraw and the confidentiality of their results. Each participant was given verbal instructions by the researcher to read out the colour of the ink each word was printed in starting from the top left, working down and to recall the colour as quickly as they could. The list of condition one was given to all the participants in odd numbered rows first faced down and were asked to start when they were ready. Each participant was told the researcher would be timing how long it took to read out each of the colours and once the participant started reading out the colours the researcher would started the stopwatch. Once completed the first task the researcher recorded the time taken (to the nearest second) on the response sheet . The second list (condition two) was then presented to the odd numbered rowed participants faced down and the same instructions were repeated. Condition two’s results were then recorded on the response sheet. For those participants who’s data was to be recorded on even numbered rows were given condition two first followed by condition one. The researcher asked each participant their age which was also recorded on the response sheet along with the participants gender. The participants were then debriefed to the aims of the experiment and were asked if they had any questions. Results The research hypothesis in this experiment was that participants will take longer to complete condition one, naming the colour of colour related written words than that of condition two, naming the colour of non-related written words. Table 2 (see Appendix 3) shows the time it took each participant to read the congruent and incongruent lists, measured to the nearest second. The following table (Table 1) displays the mean response times for the two conditions and evidence that there were differences between the two conditions, illustrating condition one taking a 3.1 second longer than condition two (see Appendix 4 for data). Table 1 Mean and standard deviation for response time in seconds |Condition |Mean response time (in seconds) |Std dev. | |Colour-related words |24.30 |5.027 | |Neutral words |21.20 |3.578 | The data was explored using a paired-samples t-test t(19) = 4.507; p = 0.00; d = 0.720) (see Appendix 5 for data). This analysis revealed the difference to be statically significant, therefore rejecting the null hypothesis of there being no difference between the time taken in the two conditions and accepting the research hypothesis of condition one taking longer to complete. Looking at both descriptive and inferential statistics the results show that reaction time of naming the congruent colour words takes longer than incongruent words. Discussion The aim of the present research was to adapt the original experiment by Stroop (1935) to gain the same results. The experiment showed a variation between response times between the two conditions resulting with a significant evidential difference. This suggests that there was interference between the automatic nature of reading words and the colour as first suggested. The findings from the Stroop effect found similar patterns of results and had greater implications on the automatic processing theory. The discovery that the automatic nature of reading tasks can interfere with other controlled processes is very significant. Gopher (1993) suggests that attentional control can be trained by controlling the amount of attention being used. This means focusing attention on initial letters could overcome the Stroop effect, however this experiment tried to limit this by having the same first two letters and number of letters in both conditions. Although the benefits of automatic processing the Stroop effect can prove the need to override the first impression that questions the requirement of some cognitive resources. The two-process theories of attention, controlled and automatic processing however cannot that clear. Reading may be a automatic process of already learned words, which would imply words already processed, suggesting the use of conscious processing at some point. During the experiment one of the participants was incorrectly given the same condition twice (condition one) (highlighted in Table 2) resulting in a dissimilar difference of 1 second between the times recorded. This suggests that even after possible practise effects of the experiment the meanings of the words plays implication to the results of recall. Another issue was highlighted during the experiment was some of the participants had difficulty reading the words. Although reading the words was not part of the instructions participants made reference to this indicating the unconscious reaction of interference. In addition, this brings to light the importance of finding out the quality of participants eye sight and distinguishing whether any are colour blind before starting the experiment. Future studies into the Stroop effect could include using shapes or objects rather than just colours or the automatic response to reactions to see whether the automatic nature of knowledge of shapes or previous experience is just as strong. In addition the possibility to explore between the different types of stimuli could be investigated to see whether a particular type of stimulus is more easily interfered than another. The results arrived during this experiment offers explanation as to why we can get some things done while directing our attention elsewhere. This can account for that not all processing of information requires conscious control. However more research is needed to get a more complete picture of controlled and automatic processing possibly by moving away from controlled stimulus’. A good balance between artificial and real life situations is required, taking into account motivations of personal experiences and prior knowledge. Word count 2,118 References Gopher, D. (1993) ‘The skill of attentional control: acquisition and execution of attentional strategies’, in Kornblum, S. And Meyer, D.E. (eds) Attention and Performance XIV: Synergies in Experimental Psychology, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Neuroscience, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Kahneman, D. (1973) Attention and Effort, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall. Schneider, W. And Shiffrin, R.M. (1977) ‘Controlled and automatic human information processing: I.Detection, search and attention’, Psychological Review, vol.84, pp.1-66. Stroop, J.R. (1935) ‘Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol.18, no.6, pp.643-62. Appendices Appendix 1: Consent forms Appendix 2 : Visual stimuli – words list (condition one & condition two) Appendix 3: Table 2 – Response sheet Appendix 4: SPSS print-out of mean and standard deviation data Appendix 5: SPSS print-out of t-test data