Selective attention and the stroop effect

Abstraction

Selective attending and its theories have been modified over many old ages, early 1s such as ‘bottleneck ‘ theories have led to more recent theories that information can be processed through a series of automatic procedures or unconsciously. It is suggested that many mundane undertakings such as reading are undertakings that can be overlearned and become automatic, these automatic undertakings can be hard to command. This study examines a survey of the Stroop consequence which looks at whether automatic procedures could interfere with color designation undertaking. The findings of this study show that automatic procedures did interfere with color designation as designation was slower when presented with a list of coloring material related words than when color impersonal words were used.

Introduction

Our sense variety meats are invariably being bombarded with huge sums of information which needs to be processed enabling it to be utilized. Our head has a limited capacity for covering with the all of the information it recieves which is why cognitive procedures are activated. The cognitive procedure Acts of the Apostless as a filter that selects merely the information that is needed for farther processing and fling the remainder, it is suggested that we do non ever have entire control over this procedure. This procedure is known as selective attending.

Research that has antecedently been conducted suggested that all information was processed to a certain extent and was known as the ‘cocktail party effect’.This was follwed up and resulted in the split-span process which was developed by Broadbent ( 1954 ) it suggested that we have a limited capacity cognitive system and that attending can merely be focused on one channel at a clip. He conducted a series of dichotic hearing trials which involved participants being at the same time fed seperate numerical information into each ear, the participants were able to remember this information easier from one ear than the other.. He concluded that attending can merely be focused on one channel at a clip. However, this did non supply an account of how the encephalon is able to get by with more than one undertaking at a clip. Kahneman ‘s capacity theoretical account ( 1973 ) took this research farther, he suggested that the within the encephalon was some signifier of processer that was able to incorporate new information with information that had been already stored, concluded that some undertakings could be overlearned, hence necessitating merely a little sum of treating as they had become automated.

Shiffrin and Schnieder ( 1977 ) researched the possibility of automatic processing andthrough a series of experiments were able, to place some differences between controlled procedures which require a big sum of processing resources and automatic procedures that occur unconsiously. This find led to the devolopment of two-process theories. An illustration of an automatic undertaking is reading, whilst it is hard to larn at first, with pratice it finally becomes automatic necessitating no witting attempt.

Stroop ‘s experiment ( 1935 ) showed that participants had trouble in calling the ink coloring material of words that were the names of colors, harmonizing to Scriffen and Schneider reading of the words is an automatic procedure but, to find the ink coloring material required controlled procedures to be employed.

The ground for this experiment is to find whether automatic processing interferes with controlled processing in a fluctuation of the Stroop experiment.This is a one-tailed hypothesis. The void hypothesis was that there would non be any difference in the clip taken to finish both conditions.

Design

A within -participants design was used for this experiment. Two conditions were employed to stand for the independent variable. Condition 1 and Condition 2. Condition 1 consisted of a list of words in coloring material names and status 2 was a list of colur impersonal words. The dependent variable was the clip taken to call the ink colors. In both conditions the participants had to call which coloring material ink the words on both lists were written in by giving a verbal response.The participants response to each list was timed utilizing a stop watch and recorded to the nearest second. To antagonize possible confounding variables the order in which the conditions were used were changed to avoid a possible pattern consequence and the same figure and colorss of the words were used in each list as the clip taken will depend on this. Some inks may stand out more than others.

Participants

Twenty participants agreed to take portion in the survey. Sixteen of the participants were recruited by the Open University from amongst work co-workers, household or friends. The staying four were recruited by myself and consisted of neighbor, s and friends. The age scope of the participants was from 18 to 69 old ages and consisted of 14 females and six males. To the best of my cognition all participants were naif to the hypothesis, fluid talkers of English, did non endure with ocular damage or color sightlessness or dyslexia. Consideration was given to the BPS Ethical guidelines and it was concluded that this experiment was within them and that there would non be any breach.

Materials

The participants were asked to sit at a tabular array in a well lit room so that the colorss were clearly identifiable. A nomadic phone stop watch application was used to clip how long it took each participant to finish each undertaking to the nearest 2nd. Two lists of words were used, each incorporating 30 words split into two columns of 15 utilizing A4 sheets of paper.. The first list consisted of 30 words that were coloring materials related, i.e, Sky. The 2nd list comprised of 30 words that were color impersonal, i.e. Sty.The words in both lists were written in one of 6 different colorss which were used in the same order for each of the lists..There were 6 words in entire on each list and each word was used 5 times and were randomised. A response sheet incorporating the participants age, gender, particiapant figure and clip taken for the trial was drawn up to enter the informations collected. The word lists used are provided in Appendix1. Standard instructions were given to each participant and each gave their consent by finishing a consent signifier ( Appendix2 ) .

Procedure

Each of the parcipants selected were asked if they were prepared to take portion in a cognitive psychological science experiment and advised that the experiment would take between 5 and 10 proceedingss. All of the participants who agreed to take portion were asked to read and so subscribe a consent signifier. The participants age and sex were recorded onto the respone sheet against a participant figure i.e, participant 1, 2 etc. and they were informed of what was traveling to go on during the experiment.Instructions for the trial were read out to the participants. They were told that they were traveling to be tested separately and that they would be provided with two sheets of paper during the trial, each sheet incorporating words printed in color inks and that they were being asked to state out loud the coloring material of ink each word was written in the fastest clip possible. After the fisrt sheet had been completed there would be a 1 minute hold before get downing the 2nd sheet. Each participant was asked if they clearly understood what was being asked of them. The undertaking was so started, each participant was foremost given one sheet of paper facedown incorporating either status 1 or status 2, they were so asked to turn over the paper and get down the trial. Equally shortly as the paper was turned the stop watch was started and their response clip was recorded to the nearest second, followed by the 2nd sheet which was recorded in the same way.. The order that the sheets were given out were randomised but it was ensured that each participant took both status 1 and 2. When both trials were completed the participant was to the full debriefed and asked if they had any inquiries.

Consequences

The research hypothesis in this experiment was that the participnats would take longer to finish one of the condtions than the other. The consequences in the Table ( Appendix 3 ) show the mean response times for Condition 1 were 2.50 seconds longer than those for Condition 2. A mated samples t-test was used to analyse the collected information, this has shown that there is a important difference between the response times between the two conditions ( T ( 19 ) = 4.430, P = .000, vitamin D = 0.648, base on this consequence the void hypothesis was rejected.

Discussion

The consequences of this experiment provide grounds that the clip taken to read a list of coloring material related words was significantly increased when compared to reading a list of color impersonal words. This is consistent with the reaseach hypothesis of the experiment and the experiment by Stroop ( 1935 ) . Stroop conducted his experiment on 100 people so the sample size for this experiment is significantly smaller, although the consequences demonstrate similar findings. These findings contradict Broadbent ‘s and other ‘bottleneck ‘ theories because if attending can merely be focused on one channel, there would be no struggle with information on a 2nd channel as it would be ignored. The consequences indicate that processing was happening at an unconscious degree which is in maintaining with Kahnaman, s theory that undertakings could be overlearned and hence go machine-controlled necessitating small usage of available cognitive procedures. The strongest relationship that the consequences of this experiment has to cognitive processing theories is the theory of Shiffrin and Schneider. They suggested that undertakings could go so automatic that any invasion effort would non be given precedence over machine-controlled undertakings, Reading is said to be an overlearned undertaking, when presented with a list of words automatic processing occurs, for illustration, we try to work out the significance of the words without holding to consciously believe about what has to be done. During the experiment participants were presented with a list of words and would hold automatically tried to work out the significances of the words, nevertheless, they were asked non to construe the words but, to merely call the coloring material of ink they were printed in. As the consequences show this undertaking was found to be more hard, particularly when the word was non related to the coloring material. The ground for this is that although they knew that they had to call the coloring material of the ink, the automatic procedure of construing the significance of the word was already active, this so required excess processing resources to be employed. The automatic procedure was in struggle with the witting attempt of calling the ink coloring material, this is reflected in the times recorded, the participants were slower when required to supply more attending to calling the ink coloring material.