Homework 7: Due Midnight Tues  November 17^th

Provide  a flow chart and a description of your planned project. An example is shown here. A project could be just a part of a full experiment, for example just the creation of the stimulus itself. The project below would be very ambitious.

Feel free to discuss the project with us. Ione will be out of town (but on email) from noon on Tues Nov 10^th to Thurs night on Nov 12th. She'll be around the rest of the time (and Geoff will be around while I'm gone).

Ione

Example

An experiment examining the effect of racism using a variant of the Wisconsin card sorting task.

In the Wisconsin card sorting task subjects cards into two separate piles without instructions, and are rewarded/penalized when they sort correctly/incorrectly. After a while the subject learns the sorting rules. At a later point the sorting rules are changed without informing the subject, and the experimenters measure the number of trials it takes to learn the new rules of sorting.

Here we will use images of black and white faces, and positive and negative words.

Half the subjects will start with the rule that it is correct to categorize black and negative words as “1”, and white and positive words as “2”. Then the rule will switch so subjects have to categorize black and positive words as “1”, and white and negative words as “2”.

The other half of the the subjects will start with the rule that it is correct to categorize black and positive words as “1”, and white and negative words as “1”. Then the rule will switch so subjects have to categorize black and negative words as “1”, and white and positive words as “2”.

Hypothesis 1. That it will be harder to learn the Black+ve/White -ve pairing both in initial categorization and during re-categorization

Hypothesis 2. That “switching” strategies will be particularly difficult after doing Black+ve/White -ve since ‘inhibition’ will block switching strategies.

Trials needed to learn Black +ve/White -ve phase one / Trials needed to learn Black white negative phase two < Trials needed to learn Black -ve/White +ve Phase One / Trials needed to learn Black -ve/White +ve Phase Two