PSYK322 Cognitive Psychology Online Module Research Assignment Sample

Introduction Of PSYK322 Cognitive Psychology Online Module Research Assignment

Stroop effect named after John Ridley Stroop involves interference that arises when the ink color of the written text and the actual written word is different. In the present Lab report, this increases the performance of cognitive mechanisms and attention, particularly how automatic and controlled processes are intertwined. The details of the Stroop effect are thus significant in constraining cognitive control and understanding of multitasking.

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Research Question

These are the primary questions of this study.

1. Does the Stroop effect exist?
2. Is there a correlation with age?

Objectives

The objectives of this study.

• To assess the existence of the Stoop effect through reaction time differences.
• To analyze the connection between age and Stroop task performance.
• To compare individual responses to congruent and incongruent tasks.
• To contribute to the understanding of cognitive processing and age-related changes in attention.

Method

Participants

The sample size of the study was 14, aged between 19 and 67 years. A convenience sampling technique is used to recruit participants from an academy.Therefore includes both students and members of staff to increase age and cognitive processing variability. Before performing the Stroop task, all participants had signed an informed consent.

Materials

The Stroop task consisted of 2 sets of slides which are congruent slides that have the written word in the same color as the name it represents. For example, red in red and incongruent where the color of the ink is different from the meaning of the word such as red in blue (Algom et al.2022). The objective was to provide participants with slides containing written words, and the participant was required to name the color of the word.

Figure 1: Congruent Task

Figure 2: Incongruent Task

Procedure

Participants received information about the purpose of the study and signed a consent form. Thought the Stroop task was conducted while the participant read all the slides alternating between the congruent and the incongruent slides. Participant’s reaction times are measured in seconds based on the time it took them to read out the slide. Making the data through different methods of analysis (Okayasu et al.2023). The reaction times are recorded in seconds and the data is later organized for analysis.

Results

Data analysis

Figure 3: Collected Data

The subsequent data analysis involved comparing the response time of the fourteen participants for the congruent and incongruent task. The data show that the participants took a relatively longer time to respond to incongruent tasks with an average of 22.5 sec as compared to 17.4 sec for the congruent task (Huang et al. 2020). The variation between reaction times for Stroop was from one second to eight seconds, with a mean difference of close to 4.1 seconds. However, participants 5 and 11 who were 55 and 67 years old respectively displayed a large variation indicating that the Stroop effect increases with age.

Therefore, participants 1 and 2 who were 19 years of age revealed a small variation. Further statistical analysis will extend these discoveries, with particular regard to the Stroop effect, a paired samples t-test to investigate the significance of the Stroop effect and correlation analysis to analyze the potential impact of age on performance impact will be conducted (Takahashi & Grove, (2020). Thus, these discoveries of complexity regarding incongruent task processing and the possible age differences can be well understood.

T-test

Figure 4: Data collection

This table represents the outcomes of the paired two-sample t-test when contrasting congruent and incongruent treatments. The mean for the congruent condition is less (17.07/29) than the congruent condition mean (21.79/30) which shows a rather large Pearson correlation of 0.913 between the samples. The test is made on 14 observations in the groups (Parris et al. 2022). This gives a t-statistic of approximately -6.096, which shows beyond doubt that the means are significantly different. The p-value for one sample t-test is less than 0.05 and below the significance level of 0.05 for both one-tailed (1.90338E-05) and two-tailed (3.80677E-05) tests. The t-test values are provided for one-tail (1.771) and two-tail (2.160). Based on these findings, the statistical evidence for rejecting the invalid view is particularly potent because it holds that the mean values for the incongruent condition are significantly different (higher than) the mean values for individuals in the congruent condition.

Correlation

Figure 5: Data collection

This correlation indicates a dataset with two columns, Age and difference parameters as well as a small correlation matrix. From the age column, can monitor different participants and their ages, which vary from 19 to 67 years. However, there are more participants with for instance 19 years =32 and 47 years =31. The difference column seems to look identical to the age column which leads to the that this one might be measuring some kind of initial-after change, where there was none, or no change occurred (Straub et al. 2022) The correlation matrix in the upper right shows that difference is perfectly correlated with age at 1, which again is still-, not surprising given the value of difference serves up identical values to the age column. In addition, there is no actual difference. It describes 14 participants, which is the same as the number of observations in the t-test mentioned in Image 1 and may well relate to these analyses being of the same research initiative.

Discussion

The results indicated that the response time of the participants in the incongruent condition was significantly higher (mean = 21.79) than that of the participants in the congruent condition (mean = 17.07). The significant effect established is robust given the very low probability level, p < 0,.0001, and relatively large t-statistic of -6.096 (Spinelli & Lupker, 2023). The high Pearson correlation of 0.913 obtained for conditions means that participants who took a long time to respond in one condition also took a long time to respond in the other, implying that individual differences are consistent across the conditions.

Concerning age, although the participants’ ages varied between 19 and 67 years, there is a perfect correlation between the difference column and Age indicating a methodological either weakness or data entry problem. If this is a reaction time experiment like the Stroop test it could explain the difference noticed when comparing the ages of test subjects (Straub et al.2022). However, from the statistics given it is impossible to conclude on the nature of the correlation between age and the congruency effect, so further research on possible age-related impact on the task performance is needed.

Conclusion

The study is able to do efficiently as it indicated that it had taken participants relatively more time to respond to the task when they matched in color and word as compared to situations where the color and the word were mismatched. The most significant average difference in reaction time crossing over periods was approximately 4.1 seconds, pointing to the interference effect resulting from the content of conflicting impulses. Moreover, considering that age affects stimulus interference, the analysis demonstrated topographic variations in the complexity of the Stroop effect older participants had greater difficulties with the task, and their reaction times were proportionately longer.

This indicates that, with advanced age, cognitive processing and attention can be reduced therefore making interference more likely during tasks that require emphatic and constant attention. They are consistent with the current literature regarding the Stroop effect to ensure its applicability in analyzing cognitive mechanisms. The future research should explore the process behind age-related differences in cognitive interference while including different subjects to improve the external validity of the result. The present research provides important data for the understanding of the structure and differences in cognitive control.

Reference List

Journals

• Algom, D., Fitousi, D., & Chajut, E. (2022). Can the Stroop effect serve as the gold standard of conflict monitoring and control? A conceptual critique. Memory & Cognition, 50(5), 883-897.Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13421-021-01251-5.pdf [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]
• Huang, Y., Su, L., & Ma, Q. (2020). The Stroop effect: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis in healthy young adults. Neuroscience letters, 716, 134683..Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394019307864 [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]
• Okayasu, M., Inukai, T., Tanaka, D., Tsumura, K., Shintaki, R., Takeda, M., ... & Jimura, K. (2023). The Stroop effect involves an excitatory–inhibitory fronto-cerebellar loop. Nature Communications, 14(1), 27..Retrieved from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35397-w.pdf [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]
• Parris, B. A., Hasshim, N., Wadsley, M., Augustinova, M., & Ferrand, L. (2022). The loci of Stroop effects: A critical review of methods and evidence for levels of processing contributing to color-word Stroop effects and the implications for the loci of attentional selection. Psychological Research, 86(4), 1029-1053..Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00426-021-01554-x.pdf [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]
• Spinelli, G., & Lupker, S. J. (2023). Target–distractor correlation does not imply causation of the Stroop effect. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 17470218231182854..Retrieved from: https://boa.unimib.it.pdf [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]
• Straub, E. R., Dames, H., Kiesel, A., & Dignath, D. (2022). Does body posture reduce the Stroop effect? Evidence from two conceptual replications and a meta-analysis. Acta Psychologica, 224, 103497..Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691822000129 [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]
• Straub, E. R., Schmidts, C., Kunde, W., Zhang, J., Kiesel, A., & Dignath, D. (2022). Limitations of cognitive control on emotional distraction–Congruency in the Color Stroop task does not modulate the Emotional Stroop effect. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 1-21..Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13415-021-00935-4.pdf [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]
• Takahashi, S., & Grove, P. M. (2020). Use of Stroop Test for sports psychology study: cross-over design research. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 614038..Retrieved from: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.614038/pdf [Retrieved on: 21.09.2024]

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