M Key And The Trial example essay topic

Introduction: The Simon effect refers to the finding that people are faster and more accurate responding to stimuli that occur in the same relative location as the response, even though the location information is irrelevant to the actual task (Simon, 1969). In studying the Simon effect it is possible to understand response selection. There are three stages which must be taken into consideration: Stimulus identification, response selection and response execution. Thus, the focus of this experiment is to determine whether or not people are faster and perhaps more accurate responding to stimuli in the same relative location as the response, despite the fact that the location information is irrelevant. Method: In order to participate in this experiment, he who is being tested needs to have purchased the ability to use cog lab and then would need to log onto that specific server in order to have access to the proper program.

Once the Simon effect experiment has been activated a start button will appear and need to be pressed. After clicking on that start button, a window will appear in which the experiment will take place. To begin, press the space bar. A small fixation dot will appear in the center of the screen, it is necessary to stare at the dot.

Place your left index finger on the V key and your right index finger on the M key. A fraction of a second later a red or green square will appear to the left or the right of the fixation dot. It is the proper procedure to press the V key on your computer keypad if the square is green. If the square is red, then you are to press the M key on the keypad regardless of the location of the square, be it to the left or the right of the fixation dot.

After each trial feedback will be presented to inform you whether or not response was correct or incorrect and how fast your time was in milliseconds. You will then need to press the space bar to begin a new trial and thus begin the process all over again. If however, you zone out or wish to disregard a trail, press the T key instead of the V or M key and the trial will be disregarded. These disregarded trials will be repeated later. There are 90 people participating in the experiment, and each person will have 100 trials. In each trial the goal is to press the V key if the box is green and the M key if the box is red.

Upon the completion of your 100 trials your data will be sent to the cog lab server and be entered in with your classmate's data. Results: The individual results as well as the class results are computed and stored by cog lab, but when retrieved prove to be very valuable. In this case, and as the graph below shows, my mean scores are 475.44 ms for the congruent value and 473.48 ms for the incongruent value. The group mean congruent score is 509.012 ms and the group mean incongruent score is 521.6884 ms.

But what does that mean? The mean value is computed by adding up all the values in a set of data and then dividing that sum by the number of values in the data set. So in this case all 100 trials are added up and then divided my 100 to determine the individual means and then that individual mean is added up with all the other individual means and then divided by 90. Another useful number would be the standard deviation. The standard deviation is a statistic that tells you how tightly all the various examples are clustered around the mean in a set of data. When the examples are tightly bunched together and the bell-shaped curve is steep, the standard deviation is small.

When the examples are spread apart and the bell curve is relatively flat, that tells you that you have a relatively large standard deviation. For each value x, subtract the overall avg (x) from x, then multiply that result by itself (otherwise known as determining the square of that value). Sum up all those squared values. Then divide that result by (n-1).

Then, find the square root of that last number. That's the standard deviation of your set of data. The most apparent result shown by the graph below however, is that in over nine thousand trials, the congruent times were faster than the incongruent times overall. That in itself proves the Simon effect to be true. People are faster and more accurate responding to stimuli in the same relative location as the response, despite the fact that the location information is irrelevant. However, in my individual case, my congruent time was slightly slower than my incongruent time which would go to show that the Simon effect is perhaps not always true on the individual lever.

This discrepancy could be accounted for in the margin of error or other such compounding variables.