Planning a Psychology Experiment on Observation.

by deepasnani (student)

Method - Design

The independent variable will be the absence or presence of the gorilla, one group will be told what they have to find and the other will simply be shown the video and later asked what they spotted in the video.

The dependent variable will be how many participants notice the change in color of the curtains in the video and how many participants spot the gorilla in the video.

During the experiment, I will ensure I do not cause any mental or physical harm to the participants, the participants will be provided with a consent form prior to the experiment

I will decide on a topic and guiding question, which will reflect in my aim and hypothesis. Then I will decide how I will conduct the experiment. The experiment will split the participants into two groups, as there will be an experimental group and a controlled group.

There will be 10 participants each in both the groups; the participants will be obtained using selective sampling from a selective group of members. I will then find a video suitable for the experiment.

I found a video on YouTube posted by the original researchers (Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris). This video will replicate the research undertaken by the two psychologists in 1997. It would be important for the participants to be over 16 years of age as they would require an average level of English to understand the research question and not cause any false results to the ...

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Procedure

Consent will be gained through the consent forms provided to the participants
I will find the original video from the experiment by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, which includes the gorilla and the individuals passing a basketball.
I will then show that video to each participant individually
Before the video I will say the follow to the participant
First “Try to see if you can spot the gorilla while counting how many passes the people passing the ball with a white t-shirt on make”
Second group will be asked a question prior to watching the video
Second “What did you see in the video, did you see anything different?”
I will then collect their answers and at the end of all the participants being tested I will compare using the ratio of the answers and come to a conclusion

Apparatus and task list

Laptop (To view the video on)
Laptop (To take notes of the answers provided by the participants)
Video of the people passing the basketball
Empty Classrooms x 2 (One to store the participants in & one with the basketball video.)

Participants

Age range:

The participants will only be from grades 10 and 11 and will only be students who are older than 16 years of age

Target Population

There will be exactly 20 students. 10 boys and 10 girls, each group will have 5 boys and 5 girls to test if gender makes a different to the participant’s answer to the questions

Male / Female

10 males and 10 females

Sampling method

Selective sampling (Participants will be picked manually depending on their levels of English and age / grade)

How will they be allocated to conditions?

They will be randomly allocated to the two groups.