Kahneman (as cited in Edgar, 2007) explains it in the limited capacity theory of attention. According to it, “the brain contains limited-capacity central processor responsible for analyzing incoming information and integrating it to information already held in memory” (Edgar, 2007, pp.11). Thus, when a person tries to do many things at once interference can occur if those things compete for the same pool of resources. However, Macleod (as cited in Edgar, 2007) showed that it is possible to do two things at once without interference. In his study, participants had to carry out a visual and an auditory task and respond to them by saying ‘bip’.
As Brown and Warner (1915) have pointed out, the difference in speed in reading names of colours and in naming colours may be accounted for the difference in experience called the "automatic word recognition hypothesis" or, as others have claimed, certain mental activities happen automatically even when not consciously stimulated by the subject. This phenomenon is due to the Stroop effect, and the following experiment aim to induce that same effect into the participants and observe the difference between reading the congruent and incongruent words. Twelve participants took part in the experiment. The data collected was analysed using the Inferential Statistical tests method, because this method enable us to assume that the whole population may behave in the same way as the participants in this experiment. The t-test value has been calculated and is found to be equal to 10.48.
Combining across the word and non-word lists, greater activation was seen for the three items compared to one item memory load condition in the left medial frontal area, the anterior cingulate gyrus, the left thalamus and the left insula. The interaction contrast revealed that the difference in activation between the one and three-item lists was greater for words than non-words in the left middle temporal gyrus and the left temporo-parietal gyrus. These authors hypothesized that their failure to find activation in the supramarginal gyrus may have occurred because their greatest memory load (three items) was not sufficiently
This study demonstrated how dramatic events could cause a physiological imprinting of a memory of the event and that emotional events will be remembered more than non-emotional events. This study provides evidence to support anecdotal and personal experiences of flashbulb memories. However, only students were used, therefore reducing its potential in generalization. Also, the researchers only relied upon
Week 4 Exercises BUS642 Business Research Methods and Tools January 29, 2012 1. Which circumstances could you make a case for using observation?.Compare the advantages and disadvantages of the survey to those of observation. Under The primary advantage to a survey over that of an observation study deals with the actual collection of data. With a survey the data collected is usually known and is more often than not directed to specific answers, because of the survey format in which observational studies collect data in a random way. However, observation can be a beneficial tool in certain situations.
Automatic processes vs Controlled processes The aim of this experiment was to test the Stroop effect and the effects automatic and controlled processes have on the test. The hypothesis is that people when performing the stroop effect will have less time and fewer errors with automatic processes, the time and errors would increase with the controlled processes. The participants were chosen by convenience and the selected participant in this case was a female, aged 52. The participant was first given a list of words that corresponded with the colour, using an automatic process, these are read aloud and the errors and the time taken to read the list is recorded. Then the second list of words, which are words not corresponded with the colour and is the controlled process, these are read aloud with the errors and the time taken recorded and compared to the first set of data.
The results suggest that participants took shorter time to read the nonsense words than that of reading the incongruent words. These findings maintain the hypothesis for the Stroop colour word task. Comparison of Reaction Times for the Stroop Colour Word Task The Stroop effect was discovered by John Ridley Stroop (1935), involving cognitive interference in colour-word processing tasks and continues to captivate experimenting in psychology to this day. Cattell in 1886 was doing his own dissertation under Whundt, and this influenced Stroop's research some 50 years earlier by reporting
Do the brains of isolated people work slower than that of people who are in constant contact. There is an agreement that two brains are better than one, but more than one brain existed in Cahokia. Armesto even says that Cahokia developed because of influences and contact with Mesoamerican cultures. (Armesto pg. 346.)
In one group, subjects were given an immediate test of recognition memory for the pictures and in other groups they searched for a target picture. Even when the target had only been specified by a title (e..g., a boat) detection of a target was strikingly superior to recognition memory. Detection was slightly but significantly better for pictured than named targets. In a third experiment pictures were presented for 50, 70, 90, or 120 msec preceded and followed by a visual mask; at 120 msec recognition memory was as accurate as detection had been. The results, taken together with those in 1969 of Potter and Levy for slower rates of sequential presentation, suggest that on the average a scene is understood and so becomes immune to ordinary visual masking within about 100 msec but requires about 300 msec of further processing before the memory representation is resistant to conceptual masking from a following picture.
The Effects of Retention Delay and Rotation on Spatial Memory. Abstract: The purpose of the experiment was to attain empirical evidence on how egocentric and allocentric representations are encoded in the short-term spatial memory, and how the manipulation of certain factors can affect this process. The aim was to discover whether rotating stimuli and increasing the time delay between observations and testing phases would have an effect on participants’ accuracy when remembering the position of a target. The study used a within subjects design, with all participants taking part in all conditions. A significant effect was found for rotation and also for the increased time delay, meaning that short-term spatial memory performance is greater when the orientation of the stimuli is not altered and when the retention delay is only a few seconds.