CLPS 0950
Hw 9 Write-Up
Does the color of the ink used affect our ability to name a written color?
Hypothesis: My reaction time for reporting the ink color of the text of a color word should be
slower than my reaction time for reporting the color of a basic object.
Null: There is no difference in reaction time between the two conditions.
Results:
As you can clearly see, I have almost no difference in my reaction times for both conditions. In
fact, it’s rather hard to see, but my No-Conflict condition actually has a slightly higher mean RT
than the Conflict condition.This is rather odd because the significant difference has been a
proven fact for like, ever. Below is a sample image of the results from someone else’s data.
Clearly, this person’s results fall in line with what we would expect, a decreased RT for
no-conflict. All of the other participants’ results show this trend. I won’t show them so I can save
space, but the function I wrote yields graphs for everyone’s results. When performing a t-test in
MATLAB using everyone’s mean RT’s from both conditions, I get this:
This shows a very small p-value which suggests that it is highly unlikely that a difference
between the two sets of data for the conditions is due to chance. We can then reject the null
hypothesis and assume that there is a significant difference in RT between the two conditions.
Why were my results weird compared to the rest of the data? Well, this could be due to
unfamiliarity with the task, the fact that I’m a bad typer, and also distraction. You see a large
standard deviation in my results shown by the error bars which is the result of me being
distracted on some trials and taking much longer to respond than necessary. I am therefore a
good example of why it is important to have a decent sample size for statistical analysis. Had I
only analyzed my own results, I would have accepted the null hypothesis.