Testing the Theory of Multitasking

1119 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Stroop effect experiment 1935

This experimental investigation has to do with how human’s attention work. It is based on a replication of the well-known “Stroop Effect” carried out on 1935 by John Ridley Stroop. The aim of this experiment was to demonstrate how hard it is for a person’s attention to be divided in different tasks, by making the participants read a series of three stimuli which consisted of: 1) words of colors in black ink, 2) words of colors in their actual font color, and 3) color words with different ink, where the participant read the font instead of the word present. The research hypothesis supposed that selective attention is as easy to be performed visually as well as audibly. The controlled variable of the experiment were the black ink color words, while the second stimuli was considered to be experimental variable. There were two independent variables that were the color words corresponding to their color and the number of mistakes each participant made in each category. The dependent variable was the third stimuli, where the participant read its font rather than the word presented. The experiment was completed within a group of sixteen participants from an age range of 13-16 (eight girls and eight boys in total). The average time and mistakes in each variable was the following: 9.28 seconds with no mistakes, 9.53 seconds with one mistake, and 25.53 seconds and an average of two mistakes. In conclusion, the observations were that it took much more time in the last stimuli, which was the one that divided attention into two tasks. Implication findings would be the modicum amount of participants in the experiment. The aim of the experiment was to discover the implications attention has when it is used in two different tasks. This inve... ... middle of paper ... ...me day at almost the same time. They were also tested one at a time, while the others stayed in a classroom being unexposed to what they would do when it was their turn. If the words are given in the participant’s natal language, there would be a greater reliability of results since it was their most proficient language. Two of the participants had the experiment conducted at a later hour on another environment. Works Cited "BACKGROUND ON THE STROOP EFFECT." Rochester Institute of Technology. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. . "BDoughertyAmSchool - IB information - grade 11." BDoughertyAmSchool - home. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. . "Participant Selection -." Participedia. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. .

Show More
Related

  • Multitaskers By James Gleick Analysis

    788 Words  | 2 Pages

    As human beings, it is becoming more of a second nature to us to multi-task. As the world is technologically advancing more and more every day, there are becoming more distractions. Social-media is flourishing, reality TV show ratings are going up, and humans even unintentionally check their phones every two minutes. In this day of age, multi-tasking is proving to promote inefficiency rather than productivity.

    Read More

  • Attentional Interference in Relation to the Stroop Effect

    614 Words  | 2 Pages

    Due to its key in understanding attention, the study that lead to many other related investigations, originated by examining interference in reading automaticity. Stroop furthered his research by creating tasks involving color naming and reading. He first compared the time it took to read color names printed in incongruent ink colors to a base line reading of color words. For the second part of his study, Stroop compared the time it took to name the ink color when congruent with the color word (e.g., blue printed in blue ink) to the time it took to name the ink color.

    Read More

  • Different Theories of Inattentional Blindness

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    Processing capacity is a very broad and flexible category according to many researchers. In fact, the quote above mentioned suggests that we often fail to notice things that happen just in front of us (unexpected events that are often salient) either because we were completely absorbed by something else or because we had so many things to do at the same time that we couldn’t pay attention to it. We have all at least once failed to see a friend who was waving at us while eating in the cafeteria or walking in a crowded street. The primary question that we should ask ourselves is: how many things can we attend at the same time? The truth is that we didn’t perceive this friend because of a phenomenon called “inattentional blindness”. The problem is that the richness of our visual experience leads us to believe that our visual representation will include and preserve the same amount of detail (Levin et al 2000). In this paper we’ll see the different theories of inattentional blindness, and the classical theories demonstrating this paradigm.

    Read More

  • The Critical Importance of Retrieval For Learning

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    The way the experiment was set it; the researches got college students to learn a list of foreign words that they have never seen before. They were given a bunch of words in Swahili-English words. The list contained 40 wor...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Multitasking Can Make You Lose-Um Focus

    1336 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the article, “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend centralizes around the negative effects of multitasking. She shows that often with multitasking, people tend to lose focus, lack work quality, have an increase in stress, and in the end she gives a solution to all these problems. Tugend conveys her points by using understandable language, a clear division of subjects, and many reliable sources, making her article cogent.

    Read More

  • Cost Of Multitasking

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    Performing well in at certain tasks and retaining information both require a high level of attention. Multitasking requires that this attention be divided amongst different tasks. As a result, the some of the attention used for a certain task must now be used for other tasks, which affects the factors needed to complete it. Referring to an experiment that was discussed earlier, Wieth and Burns (2014) stated that even with the reward, the promise of incentive could not override the limits of people’s attention. Retaining information requires undivided attention. The key word is ‘undivided.’ According to this experiment, it is nearly impossible to have the same high level of focus while working on multiple tasks that a person would while working on one task. Once someone has reached the end of their attention span, their performance begins to falter. In a final experiment involving media multitasking and attention, Ralph, Thomson, Cheyne, and Smilek (2014) stated that multitasking can lead to mind wandering and lapses in attention, which distracts people from their tasks. These results show that once their attention is divided, it can lead to distractions and difficulty completing different tasks. It is difficult to complete one assignment while focusing on several others at the same time. Multitasking affects the attention needed for a task, which can affect everything

    Read More

  • Attentional Bias Causes Anxiety

    926 Words  | 2 Pages

    Macleod and Mathews (1991) induced attentional biases within a laboratory setting to determine that a ca...

    Read More

  • Multitasking Can Make You Lose And Imm Focus By Alina Tugend

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today we live in a society where everything is seconds away from us. With the advances and affordability of quality technology, you would be hard pressed to find someone without a smartphone, laptop, or tablet, possibly all at the same time. Because of the accessibility we find that, in our tech-savvy culture, multitasking has not just become an art form of sorts, but rather an expectation. In the article “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend sets out to explore the idea that although multitasking appears to show productivity, it could be doing the opposite. Throughout her article, Tugend uses studies done by neurologists and psychologists to show how in a world that sees multitasking as an expectation it has actually made us less efficient. She proposes, through studies, that although you might be working on multiple tasks it is as if you’re playing tennis with multiple balls (Tugend, 725).

    Read More

  • The Multitasking Generation an Article by Claudia Wallis

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    Though there are some positive effects, the adverse impact of technology on education has been extraordinary. The technology community has worked hard to bring useful technology into our classrooms, all with good intentions to broaden our knowledge. With these good intentions also came about unwanted side effects such as distraction and disruption in the classroom. I can clearly remember many of my teachers yelling at us to put our cell phones, iPods, and iTouch phones away especially during lecture and exams. The yelling was not without just cause, students cheated with their devices along with updating their Facebook pages during class too.

    Read More

  • The Stroop Effect

    660 Words  | 2 Pages

    This report demonstrates that factors of the Stroop effect test and the stimulus of colour congruence, incongruence and non-colour words that give consequence to the participants’ reaction times. The Stroop Test was created in 1935 by JR Stroop, since its inception more than 700 articles related to the subject have been published, becoming an instrument widely used, both in the clinical and research fields, to evaluate the inhibitory capacity and the attentional control of the interferences. The test presents a set of words either to be categorised as congruent, incongruent or non- colour.

    Read More

  • The Effect of Emotional Stroop Test on Undergraduate Students of International Islamic University Malaysia

    2153 Words  | 5 Pages

    People went through different kinds of attention like divide attention or selective attention. Let see on the context of reading, when people try to say the colour of the words instead of reading the words it would be difficult. As adults, people have practiced reading for so long that it is hard to read a word that they look at. The situation shows that people encounter with selective attention. Stroop effect is a phenomenon when the semantic meaning of the word matches with the colour it will be easier to say the colour of the word in which it is attributed to the interference from the word in the chore of responding to the colour (Zurron, Goicoa & Diaz, 2013).

    Read More

  • The Stroop Effect

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    (Mary McMahon, 2003) Two main theories have been created and used to explain the results of the Stroop experiment. These theories are known as the Speed of Processing theory and the Selective Attention theory. In the Speed of Processing theory, it is thought that the brain needs to use more attention to identify a color than to identify a word, causing a delay as the brain processes the color. However, according to the Selective Attention theory, the brain needs to give more attention to the color, rather than the word, causing a discord between the reaction times of the word and the reaction times of the color.

    Read More

  • Bilingualism and Cognitive Control: A State of the Art Review

    1664 Words  | 4 Pages

    Giving the fact that metalinguistic awareness is not a single unit; different aspects of metalinguistic awareness reveal different correlates. While research about lexical awareness supports monolingual superiority (Chin & Wigglesworth, 2007), phonological awareness studies show discrepancy (Adesope et.al, 2010). It follows that not all research findings support bilingual superiority in all metalinguistic aspects. Some, report disadvantage or no difference between monolinguals and bilinguals, despite the fact that null significance is rare because journals interested more in dramatic findings (Bialystok, 2001; Adesope et.al, 2010).

    Read More

  • Cognitive Psychology: The Stroop Effect

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    The results showed that it is easier for people to read words correctly regardless of their color but more difficult to name the color when an incongruent word list is given. These results support Stroop’s 1935 experiment as well as the aim and therefore it can be said that the experiment has high face and construct validity. Also, the experiment is ethical as the participants weren’t harmed in any way and signed consent forms before the experiment was conducted.

    Read More

  • Kahneman's Model of Divided Attention

    1774 Words  | 4 Pages

    The phenomenon of ‘Divided attention’ is the idea that an individual has the ability to divide their attention between two or more tasks (multi- tasking). Focused attention models such as Broadbent’s theory, Treisman’s theory and Deutsch and Deutsch model explains how all our inputs are focused on one task at a time, however it is clear from looking at everyday life that we are able to divide our attention, successfully being able to complete more than one task at the same time.

    Read More

More about Testing the Theory of Multitasking

Open Document