Essay on Dd303 Tma1

In experiment 1, participants were instructed to press a key to determine if the stimulus was red, blue, yellow, or green. On the second half of the experiment, the stimulus appeared in grey with only one colored letter which was positioned randomly. Error rates for the experiment were below 2.5% for each condition, which is quite low. Experiment 2 was the same as experiment 1 except that there were 114 data collections instead of 288 and there were 36 practice trials instead of 72. According to experiment 1 and 2 it is suggested that the effect of

An interesting challenge arises when a task such as color naming is identified as both controlled and automatic, by varying the other task involved. Color naming is identified as a controlled process when the other task is word reading, but as an automatic process when the other task is shape naming. Cohen, Dunbar and McClelland (1990) proposed an alternative explanation of the Stroop effect, which does not distinguish between automatic and controlled processing. Instead, they proposed that automaticity is a range, and that Stroop interference depends on the relative degree of learning the particular tasks, not on processing speed.

Ullsperger, Bylsma, and Botvinick (2005) investigated whether the findings of Mayr, Awh, and Laurey (2003) can be replicated and how much they can be shown across different task performances. Their specific study was motivated by a prior experiment where Gratton, Coles, and Donchin (1992) found that after an incompatible type trial reaction times were reduced and target processing occurred more frequently than flanker processing on the next trial. Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, and Cohen (2001) believed that this follows the conflict monitoring hypothesis where incompatible trials involve a conflict with the response leading to greater top-down information processing (Botvinick, Nystrom, Fissell, Carter, & Cohen, 1999). However, Mayr et. al (2003) argued that the congruency sequence effect found by Gratton et al. (1992) was due to repetition priming because of stimulus repeats in a flanker task. This may have led to a faster reaction time with repeated trials. Mayr et al. (2003) used two experiments to present evidence for their argument. Both experiments failed to show the effect found by Gratton et al. (1992) when target and stimulus items did not repeat from trial to trial.

The Stroop effect was tested on four different tasks. Nineteen Queens College students were recruited by flyer, and each were assigned to a word reading task, color reading task, color inhibition task, and word inhibition task. They were timed using a stopwatch function on a cell phone, to name the color, or word to the quickest of their ability. In the order from longest reaction time to shortest: inhibition color naming task, color naming task, inhibition word reading, and word reading. This study shows that people can read words more quickly than they can name colors, and that inhibiting an automatic response to color/word tasks will take longer to do than tasks that do not involve inhibition.

Evidence for space-based attention comes primarily from a variety of cuing tasks, which assume that reaction time for detecting a target indicates processing efficiency. Since attention enhances processing efficiency, one would expect that reaction times are faster for attended features, and slower for unattended ones. For example, Posner (1980) showed that target letters were identified more quickly when they had been pre-cued by a dot in the same location. This suggests that attention was directed at the cued region of space. Egly and Homa (1984) used a task in which a general circular area was pre-cued. They found that stimulus detection was

It was therefore hypothesised that the reaction times for global judgments would be faster than the reaction times of local judgments. It was also hypothesised that consistent stimuli would be faster than conflicting stimuli in the local tasks.

This was achieved by presenting central cues, indicating the position of the target letter thus increasing focus. Through these experiments they found that when a subject is in a diffuse attention state (unfocussed) SOD do cause attentional capture and increase reaction time. However, if the subject was presented with a cue this same increase in reaction time was not observed. This led them to conclude that attentional capture from SOD is not automatic and instead propose a priority based visual attention system. In 2006 Neo and Chua conducted research which built upon Yantis and Jonides’ to further demonstrate effects of attentional capture on reaction time. They investigated whether sporadic use of the SOD increased the effect of attentional capture as well as investigated whether maintaining the same position for the target letter decreased reaction times. They found that SOD attentional capture did affect reaction times and unlike in Yantis and Jonides’ experiment they concluded SOD did trigger an automaticity response when used

The two independent variables were luminant cue patches (light cue, dark cue and equiluminant cue) and location of the cue and target (valid side with cue and target on same side and invalid side with cue and target on opposite sides). The dependent variable was participants’ reaction time in millisecond.

Snyder and Posner’s study demonstrates that the use of resources inhibits other detectors. In their experiment, there were three conditions. In each one a warning signal appeared, prior to a pair of letters. The participants’ identified whether the pairs of letters were the same or different, as quickly as possible. For example, AA may appear. In the neutral condition, the signal was a +. In the primed condition, the signal was an A, for example. In the mislead condition the signal was an H, for example. The results of the study demonstrated that accuracy rates for all groups were high; however, the reaction time of participants differed. The mislead condition had the slowest reaction times, meaning they took the longest to be identified as the same or different (Posner & Snyder, 1975). This is because the wrong detectors were primed; thus inhibiting the correct detectors. Therefore, inattentional blindness occurs because the wrong detectors were primed, and the right detectors were inhibited, because the attentional and perceptual systems have a limited capacity.

Early studies have widely researched attention with selective processing (Driver, 2001). Broadbent (1958) filter theory of attention states that certain information does not require focal attention. It is based on certain stimulus attributes such as colour and shape (Friedenberg, 2012). A previous study carried out by Treisman and Schmidt (1982) proposes that when attention is diverted from a display of several figures, the participants incorrectly combine the features of colour and shape therefore increases the illusory conjunctions portrayed by the participants (Tsal, 1989). Another study by Shaw (1978) found that reaction time of participant to identify targets varied with the probability that a target would appear in a particular display location. These results indicate that different amounts of attention towards the targets are distributed to different positions in the visual field. However, Houck and Hoffman (1986) found that the feature integration of colour and orientation can sometimes be accomplished without attention (James et al.,

The article by Avital-Cohen and Tsal (2016) discussed the flanker task experiment, which asserted that distractor interference happens unconsciously as a result of focused attention toward the target. The results from the original flanker task indicated that participants had slower responses for incongruent trials, since the distractors are inconsistent with the target and would require a different response (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). However, Avital-Cohen and Tsal (2016) questioned the findings from the flanker task experiment. They decided to challenge the idea that only the target stimuli receives top-down processing, and not the distractors (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). The first experiment aimed to test whether the distractor interference is purely bottom-up processing as claimed in the flanker task. The experiment manipulated participants’ expectations of the target using the context effect - a type of top-down processing - by changing the distractors to be either letters or digits (Psych 240 lecture, 9/21/16). Then, the researchers conducted a second experiment and eliminated the ambiguity of distractors. They wanted to test whether the result from experiment 1 was caused by an overall bias or the ambiguous distractors. In experiment 2, the researchers predicted that they would obtain similar results to the first experiment only if the results were due to an overall bias effect (Avital-Cohen & Tsal, 2016). This study allows us to deepen our understanding of available

1.) Visual Search - In this activity I participated in a classic psychological experiment that uses visual search tasks to explore fundamental process of visual perception and attention. In general I learned that selective attention filters enable us to make more automatic decisions about the stimuli around us, including which items to pay attention to during a visual search. Also, since your brain is always active and sees visual sights and sensory information, your mind copes by automatically screening or filtering incoming sensory information to let in only what is most important. Specifically, I learned that the first set of trials I did were the feature search part of the experience and the second set of trials were the conjunction search part of the experience. What I learned about my self after doing this activity is that I had a quick reaction time on the first set of trials as I was asked to find a blue circle amid orange squares and circles. But, on the second set of trials my reaction time was not as quick as it first was. On the second set of trials, I was asked to find the blue circle amid blue squares and orange circles. I believe my reaction time was quicker on the first set of trials due to the fact that I was just looking for the color blue among orange squares and circles, but on the second set of trials I was looking for a blue circle among blue squares and orange squares. Therefore, the blue squares were distractors from the blue circle and I was forced

Key Words: Word Superiority Effect, Pseudoword Superiority Effect, Reicher Wheeler, Top Down Processing, Children, Adults.

The reaction time (RT) of students was measured in the experiment to determine whether light or sound stimulus initiates a quicker response time. The question of whether or not RT was related to movement time (MT) was also challenged. Each student performed two test in random order; one testing the reaction time of a red light stimulus, or visual reaction time (VRT); and the other testing the reaction time of a “beeping” sound stimulus, or auditory reaction time (ART). The student completed the VRT trial by simply receiving the stimulus and pressing a button. The student placing and holding their hand on a button starts the ART trial. Once the student receives the stimulus (beep) they press the adjacent button as fast as they can. The ART trial does not only include the data of the RT, but also the data from the MT. Having previous knowledge that light travels faster than sound; one can predict that VRT is faster than ART. The prediction that MT is independent upon RT can be made with the thought that there are so many opposing variables that could affect the MT of an individual unrelated RT such as old age

We are replicating J.R. Stroop’s original experiment The Stroop Effect (Stroop, 1935). The aim of the study was to understand how automatic processing interferes with attempts to attend to sensory information. The independent variable of our experiment was the three conditions, the congruent words, the incongruent words, and the colored squares, and the dependent variable was the time that it took participants to state the ink color of the list of words in each condition. We used repeated measures for the experiment in order to avoid influence of extraneous variables. The participants were 16-17 years of age from Garland High School. The participants will be timed on how long it takes them to say the color of the squares and the color of the words. The research was conducted in the Math Studies class. The participants were aged 16-17 and were students at Garland High School. The results showed that participants took the most time with the incongruent words.