To show that the colour of text to the corresponding word affects the time it takes to say each colour.

Hypothesis:  The hypothesis states that people will get faster times if the colour of

                       the word is the same as the word. This is a one Tailed Hypothesis.

Null Hypothesis: The Null Hypothesis states that people will not get faster if the

                              colour of the word is the same as the word.

Method:

Design:   This is a Mann-Whitney U Test and the design of this experiment was an unrelated experiment. The independent variable was the colour of the words and the dependant variable was the time each person took to read out the set of words.

Participants:  The population of the experiment was St Mary’s college but the sampling frame is only 30 people. The participants of the experiment were all students of St Mary’s college between the ages of 16 and 19; the sample used was opportunity sample because it used random students who were around at the time.

Procedure:   The experimenter approached the participant and say “Will you please read out this set of words as fast as possible when I say go?” he then timed them with a stop until all the words had been read then he wrote down the time and moved on to the next participant. This was done for both conditions.

Ethics: There are no real ethical issues in this experiment.

Results: The Table Below shows the Times Taken

See appendix For Histograms.

The mean for Condition One is 1.77 and for Condition Two it is 3.20. (See appendix)

Condition One’s Range is 1.5 and Condition Two’s Range is 1.5.

Discussion:  The results show that the test is significant to 0.0000 and that the colour

                      of the word affected the participants.  This means that the Null

                      Hypothesis can be rejected as it has proved the Hypothesis to be

                      correct. Criticisms, which can be made, are the choice of sample

                      because it could have been done by a quota sample to compare males

                      and females.  The procedure could be change so that it was related or

                      the participants had more words to read out.  The location could have

                      been changed so the participants were in a lab this would stop people

                      from interfering and would stop all background movement and noise.

                  The experiment could be improved by using the all the college students

                      instead of just a small sample.

Conclusion:  The results show that the students of St Mary’s college were affected by

                       the colour of the Text corresponding to the word, which was written on

                       the paper.

The Difference Between the Mean of Each Condiotion: