Paper 2 Visual search Task. Psychology Research Paper

Visual Search Task
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Abstract
The paper focuses on experimental psychological research conducted on visual search. A group of 23 junior and sophomore students participated in the experiment where they pressed the spacebar if letter T was orange and in upright position. The tests were repeatedly conducted using the school library’s computer and the outcomes recorded with cell phone for further analysis using ANOVA. The findings were that the more the letters were, the more the response time. The main aim of the experiment was to demonstrate that the number of items affected the response time.
Key Words: ANOVA, outcomes, experiment, samples, data, analysis, group, and psychology
Visual Search Task
Introduction
The visual search seeks to explain how people search and locate items using vision. The work of Anne Treisman in the late 70’s grounds the foundation of research on visual search CITATION Tre77 \l 2057 (Treisman, 1977, p. 42). Usually when searching for an item, one considers features that match the object. However, the search is impossible if done in parallel. For example, searching for a blue bottle among many bottles is tedious and time-consuming as well. Therefore, the more the items, the longer the time it takes to search CITATION Tre80 \l 2057 (Treisman & Gelade, 1980, p. 99).
A new terminology, conjunctive search, primarily means searching for specific combinations of features in objects. For instance, searching for a round green bottle amongst all kinds of containers with colors and shapes. Due to the several items present, the increase in conjunctive search is a search slope. For more exclusive information on visual search, the Psytoolkit website redirects interested readers to the Scholarpedia page by Jeremy Wolfe, CITATION Hor08 \l 2057 (Horowitz & Wolfe, 1998, p. 576). Data analysts are allowed to copy-paste response times’ data to a local file for their further analysis.
An illustrative 2 minutes demo provided by the website depicts how visual search works. On the demo, the searcher is instructed to respond with a press on the spacebar every time an orange upright letter T appears on the screen. If absent, (s) he is told not to do anything, such as pressing the spacebar when the vertical orange letter is not present. Otherwise an error alert message appears on the screen indicating (s) he made a mistake. The items reoccur in 5, 10, 15, and 20. Noticeably, search time increases directly proportional to the increase in the number of items. The demo runs until 50 such search displays complete at the utmost 5 minutes. Upon completion of the task, a text file and save line comprising of the search’s data output saves what is regarded valuable by the experiments’ script for further analysis. Every experimental trial has one line on the text file, and each word/number provides the required information for the data analysis. For instance, condition, response speed in milliseconds, and occurrence of an error assigned 1-correct, 2-error, 3-too slow. The formulated hypothesis tests to check how the number of items affected response times.
(See, /experiment-library/search.html#refs).
Arising matters regarding the subject under discussion would be such as:
* Is there a significant difference on the response time of the target letter identified by the participants?
* Did the participants significantly remember non-target letters compared to the target letter (orange and upright letter T)?
The research paper will answer these questions using the sampled 23 students who participated in the visual search task. The hypotheses stated:
H0: There no significant difference on the response time used to identify the target letter by the participants.
H1: There a significant difference on the response time used to identify the target letter by the participants.
And,
H0: The participants used less time on identifying an upright and orange letter T as the number of items increased.
H1: The participants used more time on identifying an upright and orange letter T as the number of items increased.
The previous paper featured an experiment based on a 1963 description by Simon and a colleague, the Simon effect and task, CITATION Sim63 \l 2057 (Simon, 1963, p. 101). Among other numerous psychological experiments, the one performed previously demonstrated that it was inevitable for human beings to respond more accurately and faster whenever a match occurs between stimulus and response features, alias compatibility effect CITATION Sim63 \l 2057 (Simon, 1963, p. 102). For instance, when a driver on the road should follow the right button marked left (s). Notably, such a directive can him react slower or turn the wrong signal when need arises to make a turn. Statistically proven, the human brain reacts slower when the stimulus appears on the opposite side.
Methodology
1 Participants
Primarily, the brief demographic survey was crucial since it sets the norm for every psychological research. In this case, a total of 23 university students were sampled from the significant Queens University students’ population to participate in experimental psychology research. The sample comprised of 14 juniors and nine sophomores with male to female ratio was 5:18. The participants’ ages ranged between 19 and 45, with 22 years of age forming the mode of the age data set, and the mean was 22.83. Precisely, 34.78 percent of the participants who formed the majority based on racial grounds were Asian Pacific Islanders, whereas the least racially represented were Native Americans and Multiracial with 4.35 percent. Linguistically, 18 students answered ‘yes’ to the bilingualism/multilingualism question while the other five were neither bilingual nor multilinguistic.
2 Materials
In this psychological experiment, strictly, every participant used the same computer in the school library, unlike the first one where they were even allowed to use their laptops. The experiment website PsyToolkit.com was provided to participants by the course instructor. Mouse, touchpad, and keyboard were offer...