CONCLUSION: The result proves the hypothesis right. People take longer to identify colour words than neutral words. By doing this experiment as accurate as possible the experimenter has proved the hypothesis correct by providing a 95% accurate result. The level of significance was P<0.05.
Attention is a concept which almost everyone understands at an intuitive level.
Wilding (1982) suggested that processes such as focusing selection and concentration are central to the mental effort necessary for attention, but he also emphasized that factors such as arousal, alertness and limited capacity of our mental resources will also affect our attentional abilities. The world presents us with a continuous stream of sensory information. However we do not register information in the same way as an audio or video cassette player records material. Our capacity for information processing seems to be limited. If we had to attend to all the information bombarding our senses we would have no time to do anything else, so we have to take a selective approach. The best way to define attention might be as a process by which we focus and concentrate on our limited mental resources on a selection of the information which reaches our senses.
There are two ways attention can be defined as, one is focused attention and the other is divided attention.
Focused attention refers to the way in which we select what to attend to and what to ignore in the sensory array. Cherry (1953) who had studied what is called the ‘cocktail party phenomenon’, this term refers to people’s ability to switch their attention selectively between the different conversations which might be taking place in a social setting, such as cocktail party.
Cherry investigated the cocktail party phenomenon by using ‘dichotic listening tasks’ in which participants were required to listen to two different messages at the same time. Different messages were played to each ear through headphones. Cherry also asked participants to repeat one of the messages out loud and then asked them questions about the other message. He found that participants could tell him nothing about the meaningful content of the non shadowed message, they did not even notice a change of language, but they could tell him if it was a man or a women’s voice, or if it changed from a voice to a pure tone.
The participants appeared to have blocked out the meaningful content of the non-shadowed message and were only aware of its general physical characteristics. This finding suggests that we might deal with auditory message in at least two stages.
The first stage may be able to handle several messages at once, but only involved in the processing of general physical properties such as the type of voice.
The second stage can only deal with one message at a time, but processes this as deeper and more meaningful level.
Divided attention refers to the way in which we seem able to do more than one task at the same time. In other words our ability to divide our attention between competing tasks e.g. driving and drinking coke.
Allport et al. (1972) have shown that skilled musicians can accurately shadow prose at the same time as playing sheet music, and Shaffer (1975) has shown that skilled typists can shadow prose accurately while typing a foreign language. These findings suggest that concurrent tasks only interfere with each other, and need to be selectively attended to, if they are competing for the resources of the same processor. In other words, in certain circumstances we have the ability to ‘divide’ our overall attentional capacity between different tasks.
There are times when to do things at once seems easy because at least one of the tasks is automatic, in other words, you have learnt through practice to do the task without even thinking about it. An example of such task might be driving a car, riding a bike etc.
Posner and Snyder (1975) suggest that performance on a task is automatic if it can occur without the intention of awareness of the performer and does not interfere with other mental activities.
This idea has been elaborated by Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) in their differentiation between controlled and automatic process. Shiffrin and Schneider point out that the development of automaticity is important in everyday task (e.g. cycling). Some task can be performed with virtually no conscious effort and automaticity usually improved with practice.
Although we can make a distinction between automatic and attentional processing it is often difficult to decide whether processing is entirely automatic or is partly attentional. Often there seems to be a degree of both types of processing involved. Stroop (1935) done an experiment called the Stroop effect. This was where people read a loud the colour in which the word is itself the name of colour, this interferes with the task. For example when the word ‘red’ is printed in green, people find it more difficult to identify the colour green. This Stroop effect is usually explained in terms of automatic processing, people cannot avoid processing the word ‘red’ even though it is relevant to this task.
Following this work, Scheibe, Shaver and Carrier (1967) found that if the word to be identified was written in the same colour as its meaning (for example ‘orange’ written in orange colour ink), it would be identified more quickly than the same word written in a different colour (for example ‘orange’ written in green ink).
The more closely linked the stimulus word and the colour of the stimulus, the more interference there was so a word like ‘cherry’, which is already associated with the colour red, would produce more interference than the word ‘window’, although not as much as the word ‘red’ itself.
The experiment that was done was similar to the one of Stroop, (the Stroop effect) the participant was told to read out a loud a list of words that was printed in either blue, green, yellow, or red ink, but the words were the names of those colours, they simply had to name the colour ink. They were timed while doing this experiment. The experimenter made another list of words with neutral words but the same ink colours to prove his/her hypothesis correct, that people take longer to identify colour inks of colour words than neutral words. The participant was told to do the same thing to read out the colour ink a loud.
The aim of this study was to find out whether or not interference occurs when participants try to identify the colour ink that colour words are written in.
The null hypothesis states that the difference in time taken between colour words and neutral words is due to chance. The alternative hypothesis is that participants should take longer to identify the colour ink of colour words than other neutral words.
DESIGN
For this study an experiment was used. The experiment was to find out if participants took longer to identify the colour ink of colour words than neutral words, as the hypothesis of the experiment was that people take longer to identify colour ink of colour words than neutral words. The null hypothesis states that the difference in time taken between colour words and neutral words is due to chance alone. The research design used was independent measures. The experimenter had different participants for each of the conditions in the experiment, ten participants for the colour words and ten for the neutral words. An advantage for this design is there are different participants used for each condition so there would be no order effect. One problem with using independent measures is it is potential for error resulting from individual differences between the groups of participants taking part in different conditions.
The independent variable in this experiment is the thing that the experimenter manipulates i.e. the condition (colour words or neutral words) that each participant is assigned to first. The dependent variable is basically the outcome (the thing that happens as a result of the manipulation of the independent variable) i.e. the time taken to correctly identify the colour ink that the words are written in.
To do this experiment the experimenter needed to do a word list. In order to create this word list the experimenter got twenty bits of paper and on the paper he/she wrote a colour from red, blue, green and yellow on each paper, one colour on each paper so the experimenter ends up with five bits of paper with yellow, five with green, five with blue and five with red written on it. The experimenter then mixed it up and picked one randomly to put the colours in order. The experimenter did the same colour ink. The neutral words went with the colour words e.g. if red was there the word would be raw, but the neutral words were on a different list. The stats test the experimenter used was Mann Whitney’s because the data was unrelated and at an ordinal level. In this experiment the level of significance used was P<0.05 because you can be 95% sure that the results will be accurate and this level of significance is seen as acceptable for this type of psychological research.
PARTICIPANTS
For the experiment the experimenter got two groups of ten, one group did the colour words and the other did the neutral words. The participants taking part were the people who just happened to be there. The condition they were put in was picked randomly and the gender of the participants that took part was mixed. The experimenter just picked the participants that were willing to have a go. The age group was 16-25 year olds.
Ethics: the participants were told that during the experiment they were allowed to withdraw at any point if they wanted to, they were allowed to ask for a debriefing and the results were kept confidential and anonymous. At the end of the experiment the experimenter thanked the participant for participating.
MATERIALS
For this experiment, the experimenter used a stop watch to time the participants, he/she used a colour test sheet (Appendix 1), a colour word list (Appendix 2) and a neutral word list (Appendix 3) to do the experiment. The experimenter also used standerised instructions (Appendix 4) to give the participants to read out what they have to do. The experimenter also had a result table to put down the time it took for participants to do the experiment. He/She had the colour words and neutral words time taken for participants on the same table but different columns.
PROCEDURE
In this experiment the experimenter did a pilot study to make sure the experiment actually works. The experimenter picked someone by opportunity sampling this is where the experimenter just picked someone randomly for example someone that just walked passed or walked into the room were the experimenter was. To do this experiment the experimenter gave each of his/her participants a colour test to see if they can identify the colour ink before they do the experiment. After they had the colour test they were given standerised instructions so they know what is asked from them. The experimenter picked randomly which condition the participant should take the neutral words or the colour words. The experimenter did this by turning the sheet around and shuffling it. The experimenter took the participant in a quiet room and gave them a list of words after they had read the standerised instructions.
The participant was given the list of colour or neutral words, once they got it the experimenter timed them. They were told to read out a loud the colour ink, and if they got it wrong the experimenter would say incorrect and get them to repeat it again till they get it right. After the experimenter had finished with the participants they could ask for a debriefing if they wanted to, the participants were told that before they did the experiment, the participants were also told that there results will be kept confidential and anonymous. The experimenter asked participants from the age of 16-25 to take part in the experiment, and he/she picked participants by using opportunity sampling so therefore an uneven number of males and females took part.
After doing the experiment the experimenter ended up with a table of results. The experimenter got the time taken for participants to identify the colour ink of colour words and neutral words, (to see the table of results go to Appendix 5).
After doing the Mann Whitney U test the experimenter found out that his/her result was below the critical value of 27 as it was 25 so that means that the level of significance is P<0.05, which means that the results are 95% likely to be manipulated to the independent variable. (to see the working out of the Mann Whitney U test go to appendix 7)
The results show that the experimental hypothesis was correct. It takes longer to identify colour words than neutral words. There is a 95% chance that the results are significant. The mean result for the colour words were 14.76 and the neutral words were 10.6. This is highlighted in the pie chart in (Appendix 6) which gives a visual representation of this difference.
There were a few instances of participants taking longer with the neutral condition than participants doing the colour condition. This could be due to participant variables in alertness, motivation and fatigue.
The results of the Mann Whitney U test show that the experimental hypothesis is supported and that the null hypothesis is rejected. The observed value of 25 is below the critical value of 27 which suggests that these results are significant at P<0.05. This means that these results are due to the manipulation of the independent variable rather than being due to chance.
The aim of the study is to find out whether or not interference does occur when participants try to identify the colour ink that colour words are written in. the results highlight the fact that interference does occur because participants took longer to state the colour of ink that colour words were written in.
The results of the experiment showed that the experimental hypothesis can be supported, participants took longer to identify the colour ink that colour words were written in than neutral words. The experimental hypothesis was that people take longer to identify colour ink of colour words than neutral words. This means that the null hypothesis which states that the difference in time taken between colour words and neutral words is due to chance can be rejected.
The result that the experimenter got is in relation to previous research. Stroop (1935) had done a similar experiment to this, where participants read out a loud the colour in which the word is printed, when the word is itself the name of colour. Stroop found that participants take longer to identify colour words than neutral words just like the experimenter found.
This study supports Stroop’s findings and lends more weight to the argument that interference does occur, the study was done by Scheibe, Shaver and Carrier (1967) they found that if the word to be identified was written in the same colour as its meaning (for example ‘orange’ written in orange colour ink), it would be identified more quickly than the same word written in a different colour (for example ‘orange’ written in green ink).
The more closely linked the stimulus word and the colour of the stimulus, the more interference there was so a word like ‘cherry’, which is already associated with the colour red, would produce more interference than the word ‘window’, although not as much as the word ‘red’ itself.
This experiment supports this research because all participants answered ‘green’ for the 5th ink quickly because it is also the colour word green on the colour word list.
The reason why we read the colour words instead of concentrating on the colour ink is because it is automatic processing, you just naturally begin to read the colour words.
Limitations and modifications
If the experimenter did this study again, to make it better the experimenter should pick an even number of males and females to do the experiment on both conditions to avoid gender effects. The experimenter should get participants that are around a similar age e.g. 16-18 so age difference don’t take part in the outcome of the results, as people older could be more intelligent than the younger ones. Also more participants as twenty are small and not very generalisable.
Implications of this study
There are implications of this study for example advertising, they advertise their product or company by putting the good offers in big bold writing so it would catch an audiences attention, and put the information that they don’t want the audience to read in small writing at the bottom of the screen or paper, so when you watch or read the advert you automatically look at the big writing as its automatic processing. A lot of insurance adverts do this.
Wilding, J.M. (1982) perception – from sense to object, London: Hutchinson.
Shiffrin,R.M. and Schneider,W. (1977) controlled and automatic human information processing II: perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory, psychological review, 84, pp. 127-90.
Scheibe, KE,Shaver,PR and Carrier, S.C (1967) colour association values and response interference on variants of the Stroop test, Acta psychological 26, 286,-95
Stroop, J.R. (1935) studies of interference in serial verbal reactions, journal of experimental psychology, 18, 643-62
Cherry. E.C. (1953) ‘some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and two ears’, journal of the acoustical society of America 25, pp. 975-9
Posner, M.I. and snyder, C.R.R. (1975) ‘facilitation and inhibition in the processing of signals’, in P.M.A. Rabbit and S. Dornic (eds) attention and performance: V. London: academic press.
Allport, D.A., Antonis, B. and Reynolds, P. (1972) ‘on the division of attention: a disproof of the single channel hypothesis’, quaterly journal of experimental psychology, 24, pp. 225-35
Psychology for A-Level
Mike Cardwell
Liz Clark
Claire Meldrum