Briefing and debriefing will also be taken into account, and so they are to be briefed beforehand where it will be made clear what their task is and what the investigation will involve. Although I will not be able to fully brief them in regards to my aim and hypothesis, I will state this in the debriefing that will occur after the experiment is finished.
Consent is a major issue when discussing ethics, and so I plan to send out consent forms to the head-teacher of the school and to the form tutor of the participants as they are in loco-parentus, making obtaining permission quicker and easier.
No psychological trauma or physical harm will happen to the participants and the pictures shown are of a neutral nature without the possibility of causing offence or upset, meaning the participants will leave the experiment in the same physical and psychological state they entered it in.
Independent Variable: This is the condition I will be manipulating in order to monitor the change in results and in this experiment the independent variable is the topic of the words and pictures shown.
Dependant Variable: This is the thing that changes due to the manipulation of the independent variable and it is what I will be measuring. In this case it is the definition drawn or written of the ambiguous word.
Extraneous Variables: These are the other things that may affect the dependant variable other than the independent variable that must be controlled to the best of our ability in order to ensure a cause-effect relationship and reliable results. They are split in to two groups.
Subject variables:
One of these variables is clarity of sight because if someone can’t see the picture or word as clearly the conclusion they come to of what the ambiguous word means will not be a result of perceptual set as they may not have been affected by the stimuli. It will be hard to monitor or even be aware of this, but it can be assumed that those with bad sight will have taken necessary action, i.e. be wearing glasses.
Another may be age, as age can affect the person in many ways, for example memory. I will have chosen participants for this experiment who will be from the same academic year as I will be asking for volunteers in the 6th Form common room, making the age roughly the same, thus controlling this extraneous variable.
Gender may also affect the results as it is widely believed that male and female minds work differently. This will not be an issue as the participants are chosen from an all-girls’ school. Also I have chosen the matched pairs method so both experimental groups will have ‘equals’ and should produce reliable results.
Situation variables:
Outside Noise can be a problem as it may distract certain participants. This will be minimised by a sign outside asking people to be quiet and informing them of the experiment
Time of day may affect the participants’ attention span, tiredness etc, but as the whole experiment will be performed on the same day, the subjects will be tested at the same time and this variable will be controlled.
Temperature will be kept constant as they will be in the same room also as this may affect the alertness of the participants.
I shall ask for people to participate in my experiment in my common room and allocate a date and time to conduct it. I will ask who is available that day out of the people who are in the 6th Form common room at that moment in time. I will try not to be affected by bias and ask everyone who passes me, regardless of if they are my friends or otherwise. This will hopefully give me a fair representation. I will stop asking people once I reach 20 participants, but I will have to make sure the participants do not take AS Psychology. I will be using the independent groups design as my experiment would be made redundant due to the participants having witness both sets of visual stimuli and so will remember it when perceiving the ambiguous word. Selection for condition A (or ‘clock’ group) and condition B (‘dock’ group) will be done randomly, using the lottery method by the participants selecting a coloured counter out of a bag. This will once again, hopefully prevent bias and is quick and easy.
I will require the following materials:
- Visual stimuli for ‘clock’ consisting of 4 clock related words and 4 clock related pictures.
- Visual stimuli for ‘dock’ consisting of 4 dock related words and 4 dock related pictures.
- 20 pieces of paper for answers.
- 20 consent forms
- Standardised instructions.
- One quiet room in which to conduct the experiment.
I chose the words ‘clock’ and ‘dock’ as they can easily be presented in a pictorial format, making it straightforward to vary the visual stimuli. There were also many synonyms and related words I could use. Additionally, to my knowledge these words have not been used in any large-scale experiments, so it is only a version of a perceptual set investigation, rather than a straight copy of one.
I have chosen to use 8 picture/word cards as then the experiment will be long enough for the participants to take in the sort of physical context I will be presenting them, but not too long so as their attention wanders or that they forget which words/pictures they have seen.
I decided to collect the result using an answer paper, and asking the participants to record their answer as either a drawing or definition. This was to limit the confusion if, say, the participant couldn’t think of a way to describe it or draw it, and so they would have a different option. Both of which would be easily understood by me and would be able to be recorded without any difficulty. If I had chosen to record the results verbally, however, there may have been conformity issues as they may have changed their view once they heard other participants’ answers.
Method: Participants
My target population is girls aged 16-17 in year 12 who do not take psychology as an AS level (to avoid knowledge of perceptual set producing demand characteristics) in a school in Bexleyheath. All participants are of the same sex and have been chosen using opportunity sampling. Choosing them all from year 12 will, as previously stated, eliminate the extraneous variable to age and choosing them from an all-girls’ school will eliminate that of gender.
Method: Apparatus
Consent forms, visual stimuli and standardised instructions can be found in the appendix.
Method: Procedure
I will conduct the experiment in one class room, hopefully somewhere unaffected by outside noise. I, as the experimenter, will stand in front of the participants at a reasonable distance allowing all to be able to see me clearly. I will then have a bag of blue and red counters or cards in order to allocate each participant to either condition A or condition B. This is to ensure no bias is taking place during the selection.
The standardised instructions should then be read out ensuring there is no-one unclear on anything covered by this or out of ear shot. They will all be made clear of the ethical information that is relevant to this study and consent forms will be collected in if they haven’t been prior to this time.
The ambiguous word I will use will be ‘dock’ as in the right handwriting it can be read as ‘clock’ as well. I will have to hand-write this as there are no computer font-faces that will make the word unclear, but to keep it fair I will use the same handwritten word card for both conditions. I have will 8 picture/word cards to show each group, one consisting of pictures and words relating to ships for ‘dock’ and the other ones will be time-related, such as clocks. They will be alternated, so a picture is presented followed by a word, followed by a picture etc in order to vary the physical context evenly
The participants that have been allocated to group B will be asked to put their heads down on the desk with their eyes shut to make sure they are not being exposed to the material intended for group A. As there is no verbal aspect to this study I am able to keep both groups in the room at the same time. This is to minimise extraneous variables of noise (as they will be effected by the same amounts) and temperature (as they will be in the same room) etc. Group A will then be shown the picture and word cards (see appendix) relating to clocks and time. I will hold up each card for 3 seconds as I feel this is enough time to perceive the information. This applies to both conditions. I will then ask group A to write or draw the definition of the last, handwritten word. The answer sheets will be collected in when it is clear all participants are finished. This group will then be told to remain silent but will be allowed to watch group B’s visual stimuli. The same will be repeated but with the picture and word cards relating to ships and docks. These answer sheets will also be collected in and the experiment will be completed. The participants will then be completely debriefed and thanked for their time. They will then be asked to leave.
Replicable Procedure
- When all participants are present and allocated to each group, written permission for participants should be collected.
- Standardised instructions should be read and the experimenter should ensure they are understood.
- Visual stimuli should be presented to the appropriate group, ensuring none of group B are watching group A’s cards.
- Interpretations of the ambiguous word should be collected.
- Participants should then be thanks and debriefed and invited to leave.
Results
This data shows that the majority of people in condition A or the “Clock” group read the ambiguous word as such, leaving most of the perceptions of “dock” to condition B. This was how I predicted.
The percentage of condition A participants who responded as predicted, by perceiving the word as ‘Clock’ is:
9/10 x 100 = 90%
The percentage of predicted responses from condition B participants is:
8/10 x 100 = 80%
Overall, the percentage of ‘correct’ answers (those which reject by null hypothesis) are:
17/20 x 100 = 85%
Discussion
This investigation I carried out did indeed prove my experimental hypothesis and so therefore rejecting my null hypothesis which was: The participants will read not the ambiguous word as one relating to the set of words read or pictures seen beforehand
My results, however, do not perfectly support this, but as the contradictory responses are only minimal (3 out of the 20 results collected) I do not feel as though this is enough evidence to prove my hypothesis incorrect. As participant 8 and 15 who both were exposed to condition B (the immediate physical context of ships and harbours etc.) but were two out of the three anomalies, I can put this down to the ambiguous word resembling the word ‘clock’ slightly more than ‘dock’. This could have been something even simpler, though, for example, these participants entered the experiment following a discussion about time, or were looking at the clock at the point of response. The other anomaly was participant 11, in condition A, who perceived the ambiguous word to read ‘lock’. This could be for many reasons, one being just because of the word being too ambiguous or because of information seen previous to the experiment or maybe due to poorer eyesight. None of these can be helped, except the first suggestion which is proved to be untrue due to the amount of correctly predicted responses.
As the version of the write-up of Bruner and Minton I have studied does not state their specific results, it’s hard to compare mine in order to test my success. I do feel, however that as 85% of my results conformed to the hypothesis that I have proved perceptual set.
[…]
In conclusion, I feel that I had controlled extraneous variables to the best of my ability and could not take anymore measures to ensure a fairer test. I conducted the experiment in a free lesson and so the participants were tested in virtual silence as all of the lower school were in lessons and so would not disturb the experiment. I had localised the target population to just a small segment of available people making them all from a girls’ school and from the same academic year and thus eliminating the variables of age and sex.
There are, of course going to be limitations preventing entirely accurate results from such a small-scale investigation. I feel that I have produced fairly reliable results taking into consideration the allocated time scale and limited resources and small number of available people from my target population.
For my results to be deemed as more accurate, I could expand my results by using a larger number of participants which would prove that the anomalies of this experiment are such and so possibly make the percentage of predicted responses higher. This would mean that my investigation could be used to prove perceptual set.
I could also investigate the presence of perceptual set in those of a different age and gender to see if my findings would be different if an alternative target population had been used or if it would be consistent through-out. Once this is established I could perform further experiments to explain the reasons why I think those results had been produced.
As far as this particular experiment is concerned, I would have liked to make the experiment more formal as I feel this would prevent the possibility of conferring between participants as this may have affected some of the results and I would not be able to prove the existence of a cause-effect relationship. This could be achieved by extra people in the room making sure that each answer is independently constructed without the added influence of their classmates next to them.
I made sure I performed my investigation in correspondence with the ethical issues I raised earlier, informing the participants of their right to withdraw at any point if they so wished. I briefed and debriefed them, telling them the true nature of the experiment and how their results were to be used in my coursework. No pictures or words of a potentially disturbing or harmful nature were shown to them and the left the classroom without any have having come to them as a result of this research.
Evaluation
I believe that my results were as accurate as can be expected in the given conditions. Obviously, if this was to be carried out in more professional circumstances, i.e. in a psychology laboratory with participants who did not know each other, than the results would possibly be more precise. The results did conform to those obtain by Bruner and Milton in 1955. Therefore, I can say that my experiment did run as planned without any unexpected problems, as the vast majority of participants who were shown the ambiguous word after being exposed to the immediate physical context of pictures of clocks and words relating to time, read the word as such and the group exposed to nautical pictures and words read it as ‘dock’.
References
Appendix
The Standardised to be read to the participants before the experiment is conducted are as follows:
“Thank you for participating in my psychology coursework investigation. If you feel uncomfortable at any point, you are free to withdraw from the experiment and leave if you so wish. You will soon be presented with a set of pictures and words, the nature of which depends on which group you have been allocated to. Please do no write your name on the piece of paper, as the results are to remain anonymous to avoid bias. If you have picked a blue counter out of the bag you are in group A, and if you picked out a red one, you are in group B. Is there anyone uncertain about which group they are in?
Please can everyone in the B group put your heads down on the desk with your eyes shut. Don’t be tempted to look as the results of this experiment depend on it. Everyone in group A is now needed to look at the cards and write a short definition or picture of the word on the last card which will be handwritten. Does everyone understand and can everyone see the cards clearly?”
After the results from participants in condition A have been collected, this should be read to group B:
“Now, those who have been allocated to group B, please can you look up and make sure you are close enough to see the cards properly. You are now being asked to do the same as group A; look at these cards and then write a definition or picture of the word seen on the last card which is handwritten. Are there any questions?”
Debriefing (for after the whole experiment has been completed):
“Thank you for participating in this investigation. It was to prove the existence of perceptual set, which is where pictures or words seen before one that is unclear, i.e. the last word, affect how you perceive it. If you have any questions regarding this topic or how your answer will be used, please feel free to ask me.”
The words used as visual stimuli were:
For condition A:
Tick
Time
Tock
12:00
For condition B:
Ship
Harbour
Boat
Port
I chose these particular words by conducting a small pilot investigation asking people unrelated to the experiment which words first came into their head when they thought of clock (for condition A) and dock (for condition B). I only chose 4 words for each as I did not want the experiment to be too long so that the participants lose interest and so concentrate their attention elsewhere. They were enlarged to fit a sheet of A4 in Times New Roman font. This meant that the word ‘Harbour’ had to be in a slightly smaller font size than the others in order for it to fit, but I did not think this would effect the experiment to enough of an extent to need to change it.
I also used 4 pictures per condition which I showed in-between each word. I did this because I wanted to vary the stimuli given. The pictures I showed were:
Condition A:
Condition B:
I showed them in this order and enlarged them to fit a whole of one side of A4.
To Mrs. Hutchinson,
As part of my psychology AS level coursework, I am to conduct an experiment. I am writing to ask your permission to use 20 year 12 pupils in this experiment. I will be investigating perceptual set, and will require these students time for roughly 10 minutes. They will be picked at random out of those available at a specified time during a shared free period. They will be treated completely ethically and will be able to leave at time during the experiment, and the results will be kept anonymous.
I will be awaiting your response.
Regards,
Emily Collins
12BD
Dear form tutor of class 12__,
I am conducting a psychology investigation that will be used for coursework going towards my final AS grade. To do this, I will need a total of 20 year 12 pupils willing to participate in an experiment looking into the presence of perceptual set. I wish to ask permission to allow pupils from your form to take part in this. As it is vital that those partaking in this have no prior knowledge of the topic and so cannot take psychology at AS level, I can’t involve a whole form group. This means I will list the individuals from your form below on the reply slip. They will also, of course, be required to give personal consent to join in.
The experiment will take place lesson 5 on Thursday 5th February but I will not be taking any pupils out of lessons, so it will only involve those with a free period at that time. No harm will come to them and the experiment is perfectly humane, conforming to all ethical considerations. They will all be permitted to withdraw form the experiment at any point.
Regards,
Emily Collins
12BD
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FAO: Emily Collins 12BD
The individuals concerned are:
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I do/do not give permission for the pupils named above to participate in this investigation.
Signed: ………………………… Date: ……….
Candidate No: 8146 Emily Collins 12BD
