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NORTH SOUTH UNIVERSITY PSY101L Introduction to Psychology Laboratory Sec: 07 Report on: Reaction time to Neutral and Emotional Words And Gender Difference in Abstract Reasoning (Particular fulfillment of the requirement of the course) SUBMITTED TO: DR.A.K.M. REZAUL KARIM (ARK3) PROFESSOR DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND PHILOSHOPY NORTH SOUTH UNIVERSITY SUBMITTEDBY: Foujia Rahman Sorna ID:1620038030 Submission Date:21,March,2020

Experiment 1 Reaction time to Neutral and Emotional Words

Abstract People get exposed to thousands of different words every day. Different words facilitate different exposure effects and the way they react and respond to these words aren’t the same. Different words provoke different responses which vary from person to person. A person’s characteristics, mood, thoughts, perspectives contribute to and manipulate these responses which are different from others. Hence, it can be considered as a dubious issue. An experiment was conducted in the psychology laboratory of North South University to examine, analyze and study this issue. A single independent subject design was used to conduct the experiment. The type of word was considered as the independent variable (IV) and the reaction time of the respondent was considered as the dependent variable (DV) of the experiment. The experiment was conducted on an adult male participant from North South University. The participant was required to respond immediately right after hearing every word from wordlist that contained 30 words in total. 15 of them were neutral (N) and 15 of them were emotional (E). The experimenter carefully recorded and kept track of the reaction time of the participant for each word. The experiment showed that the participant took longer to react to neutral words than the emotional ones. That means the reaction time of neutral words were longer. Hence, it was summed up that, people tend to take more time while responding to neutral words.

INTRODUCTION The human brain is a complex composition of neurons that are interconnected and these neuron networks signifies many characteristics of human brain. Language and emotions have impacts on each other. Multiple previous research and findings examined changes responses including facial expressions, skin conductance or heart rate through affective assessment of emotional words and sentences. According to Jaeger, Bourschied, Santos,& Stein ,2017, many studies have examined the correlation emotions and memory via focus on time data relevant to word association. Memories of some experiences are a source of joy and happiness whereas memories of some other experiences produce fear or sadness in them. In the same way, not all types of words have the same impact on people. Emotional words that are associated with different emotional states have effect on people and their feelings as well as remind them of the past experiences. On the contrary, neutral words are just regular words with no significant association with emotions rather they are just a means of communication in daily lives. Hence, they don’t have any significant impact on people, or their emotions and they seem less meaningful. They hold less significance in people’s mind.

Literature Review:

Many studies concluded that a complex stimulus increases reaction time due to slowing down the reaction process. According to Kousta, Vinson &, According to one hypothesis, negative valence is more relevant for survival and is associated with a general slowdown of the processing of stimuli, due to a defense mechanism that freezes activity in the face of threat”. Generally, emotion words incite differential reactions than that of neutral words. Nevertheless, words are typically processed within a context rather than in isolation (Sereno, Scott, Yao, Thaden & O'Donnell, 2019).

Research Question: The questions my hypothesis will be answering from this experiment are given below: 1. Does it take longer for the participants to react for emotional words? 2. Does the participant take same amount of time for reacting to both types of words? 3. What are the factors that might have affected the reaction time of the participant?

Definition of word: Words refer to speeches that humans use as a means to express their feelings, emotions, internal thoughts, communicate meaningful messages to interact with others. Word posses the power to provide humans with boundlessly flexible conditional semantic stimuli that are real as well as effective like other powerful stimulus. A person’s reaction to different types of words can tell a lot about his personality, internal thoughts, experiences he has had, feelings etc. Different words refer to different meanings and produce different types of reaction or responses. Emotional words cause different responses than neutral words.

Definition and difference between neutral and emotional words: According to Jersild, ‘The term emotion denotes a state of being moved, stirred up or aroused in some way.’ P.T Young said, ‘Emotion is an acute disturbance of the individual as a whole, psychological in origin, involving behavior, conscious experience and visceral functioning.’ (2019). Emotional words refer to the words that are associated with emotions, feelings. Emotional words express emotional states. Emotional words possess high arousal values and affect an individual’s emotional state. Such a word can have emotional impacts on them and

remind them of particular events related to the emotions the particular is associated with. Examples of emotional words are love, hate, song, hug etc. Words that have neutral connotations and don’t have any emotional meaning or aren’t associated with any emotional state are neutral words. Such words usually might not have any impact on our feelings or emotional state. Such words are regular words that people use in their daily lives to simply communicate. For example, independence, paper, night etc.

Reaction Time: For this experiment, reaction time is the time taken to respond to the words of the list in the experiment sheet. It is the interval between the presentation of a stimulus and time taken to respond to the stimuli by the participant. There can be two types of reaction time, simple reaction time and complex reaction time. For this experiment, complex reaction time is expected to be observed. It can be used to adjudicate the amount of time it takes to process different things regarding external signals. ("How Can You Best Measure Reaction Times?", 2019)

Different Methods of Measuring the Reaction Time: 1. Reaction Time with a word cue 2. Reaction time with word association 3. Simple Reaction Time 4. The choice reaction time test 5. State of the Organism 6. Stimulated Sensory Modality

Factors Affecting Reaction Time: Arousal: One of the most explored components influencing response time is 'arousal' or condition of contemplation, including muscular stress. During an intermediate level of arousal, reaction time is the fastest. On the contrary, too much relaxation or worries of the subject cause deterioration. Reaction time improves as the arousal increases (2019).

Age:

Reaction time is affected by the age of the subject and it varies with age. Simple reaction time starts getting shortened in infancy and the process keeps continuing till 20s. Then it slowly starts to increase and keeps increasing at slow pace till someone reaches 50s or 60s. It gets faster in 70s and beyond. Older adults usually take slower reaction time. Reaction time slows down with age. Often old people focus on one stimulus and ignore the other stimuli (2019).

Gender: Regardless of the age, males usually take less reaction time and react faster than that of the females. Bellis reported that the average time taken by males to press a key in repose to light was 220 msec whereas female took 260 msec on average. The deterioration caused by the age in reaction time is similar in both males and females. When it comes to aiming at a target, males are faster compared to women, but females can target more accurately than men (2019).

Practice and errors: When the subject is exposed to a reaction time task that is new, there is less consistency in reaction time compared to the tasks that have been done several times. Error causes deterioration in reaction time because after making an error, the subject becomes more careful and cautious and takes more time to react. A research shows that after three weeks of practice, the reaction time decreased and the effect of it lasted for at least three weeks (2019).

Fatigue: Fatigue slows down the reaction time. This fatigue has more impact if the task is complicated. Mental fatigue, particularly drowsiness causes the greatest effect. A study found that sleep deprivation for twenty-four hours increased the reaction time of people aged between 20-25. Muscular fatigue doesn’t usually have any significant impact on reaction time. Sleep deprivation causes the subject to put more effort to react and to stimuli (2019).

Distraction:

Distraction lengthens reaction time. A study has found that noise in the background causes increase in the reaction time. A study found that vibration of a computer slowed down the reaction time, increased the rate of errors and resulted into visual fatigue (2019).

Purpose: The purpose of the experiment was to find out the difference between the reaction times the participant takes to react to emotional and neutral words. The objective also examining the different effects two different types of words have on the reaction of and the reaction times taken by the participant.

Variables: Independent Variables (IV): Words (Emotional and Neutral) Dependent Variables (DV): Reaction Time (RT)

Hypothesis: The reaction time to emotional words is longer compared to the reaction time to neutral words.

METHODOLOGY: DESIGN: In the experiment a single independent subject design was used

PARTICIPANT: The participant was a male 22 years old male who was student of North South University’s from BBA department.

Apparatus: 1. A list of 30 words in English(15 emotional (E)words and 15 neutral (N) words)

2. A stopwatch 3. Paper, pencil and pen. Procedure: The participant was invited to the classroom on the day of the experiment and was given the “instruction” paper which was given to the participant and the experimenter explained how the experiment will be conducted. After the process “participant informed consent” paper was given which was read and signed by the participant and then by the experiment. After the process was discussed the experiment took place. For the experiment, the experimenter would read aloud a word and then start the stopwatch. Right after the participant responded to the said word, the experimenter would stop the stopwatch and then write down the response time. Since the participant is an English medium student he had trouble understanding in a few emotional words that took some extra time. When the experiment concluded, the experimenter took feedback on the experiment from the participant.

RESULTS Type of Word

Total Reaction Time

Average Reaction Time

(Seconds)

(Seconds)

Neutral Words

93.58

6.24

Emotional Words

80.98

5.399

From the table it can be concluded that it took longer to respond to neutral words than emotional words. The participant took 80.98 seconds to respond to 15 emotional words whereas she took 93.58 seconds to respond to the 15 neutral words.

DISCUSSION: The result of the conducted experiment shows that on average the reaction time to neutral words is higher than the reaction time to emotional word. Therefore, the result are not parallel to the hypothesis the result is sample error because we selected participant randomly. Individuals usually take less time to reaction time neutral words while communicating whereas longer to emotional words as they result in higher level of activity in one’s brain. But my participant took less time for emotional word. I think my participant is emotionally strong. The experiment faced a setback due to language barrier. The words were in English but my participant some word couldn’t understand and take extra time to response this word. For example, the emotional word friend which means companion took 9.13 seconds to react to and also neutral word cupboard which took 16.22 second. The least reaction time for the emotional word is flower which takes only 1.55 sec and for the neutral word is chair 3.96 . The longest reaction time was for the neutral word was which took time was for the word (neutral) was cupboard (16.22seconds). Emotional information are more frequently remembered than neutral information, a fact typically shown by manipulations that ask participants to recall previously learned emotional stimuli (Christianson, 1 992;

Guy & Cahill, 1999; Hertel & Parks, 2002; Kensinger,

Brier- ley, Medford, Growdon, & Corkin, 2002; Kens inger & Corkin, 2003).

The experiment had some limitations. The result was the error in the sampling method. The participant was chosen randomly from North South University. Hence, the participant can’t represent the population accurately. Selecting a large sample size for collecting data could have eliminated this limitation to some extent. The probable response biases weren’t considered either which might have an impact on the results. The room where the experiment took place had extraneous variables that might have distraction and interruption in the experiment affecting the findings. Moreover, it wasn’t possible to conduct the experiment in an isolated room which might have affected the outcomes as well.

Conclusion In Summing up, it can be said that the findings of the experiment clearly shows that the participant took more time to react to neutral words than emotional words. Hence, the hypothesis is not proven true. It was error in the sampling method.

References

Mueller, C., & Kuchinke, L. (2019). Individual differences in emotion word processing: A diffusion model analysis. Retrieved 5 December 2019, from How Can You Best Measure Reaction Times?. (2019). Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00222895.2018.1518311 (2019). Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.hptinstitute.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/01/FactorsAffecting-ReactionTime1.pdf (2019). Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.radford.edu/jkell/Reaction%20Times.pdf (2019). Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/787880.pdf Sereno, S., Scott, G., Yao, B., Thaden, E., & O'Donnell, P. (2019). Emotion word processing: does mood make a difference?. Retrieved 5 December 2019, from (2019). Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320621079_Emotions_Psychology

APPENDIX

Experiment 2: Gender difference in Abstract Reasoning

Abstract The phenomenon that there is difference in reasoning ability of male and female has been an arguable issue for quiet a long period of time. ‘Abstract Reasoning’ is a test that is conducted between a male and a female. The ability to analyze, examine information, identify different types of patterns and relationships and resolve problems on a complex, subtle level is called abstract reasoning. A prediction was made that female participants are better when it comes to abstract reasoning. An experiment was conducted in the psychology lab of North South University, to examine and analyze this issue. Two independent subject design was used in this experiment. The gender of the experiment was the independent variable (IV) and abstract reasoning was the dependent variable (DV). One adult male participant and one adult female participant who are currently doing their undergraduate in the North South University participated in the experiment. A lot of factors can play role in this ability such as socioeconomic class, family background, education, upbringing etc. Both the participants had to sit for a differential aptitude test (DAT). The participant was provided with 50 questions which they had to answer within 25 minutes. The result of the experiment showed that the score of the female participants was higher than the male participant. Therefore, it was summed up that gender difference has an impact on the ability of abstract reasoning.

Introduction Psychological tests are standardized of an individual’s behavior that is used to measure behavioral differences among individuals. Humans need to make different decision at different situations and phases of life. Decision making is a significant part of any individual’s life. There are suggestions and about gender difference having a role in an individual’s abstract abilities. But according to a pilot study done in 2013, no such correlation was found (Chraif & Manea, 2013). Another study to support that is by Hatcher which concluded that the gender has nothing to do with the psychological mindedness of the participants of the participants. (Htacher, Hatcher, Berlin, Okla, & Richards , 1990). On the other hand, there are studies that show that female participants had a higher score in aptitude test compared to the male counterpart. According to, a test conducted in 1993 in a sample of 320 college students, the female students performed significantly better in a letter series test compared to their male peers (Quereshi & Seitz, 1993)

The purpose of different psychological tests is to evaluate the cognitive as well as emotional functioning of different individuals through visual, verbal or written evaluations. Several types of test are done to reach a conclusion which are given below: 1. Intelligence Test 2. Personality Test 3. Attitude Test 4. Achievement Test 5. Aptitude Test 6. Neuropsychological Test 7. Vocational Test 8. Direct to Observational Test 9. Serological Test

Literature Review: The studies investigating this matter had a long history. A paper reports the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) scores of a nationally representative UK sample of over 320,000 pupils on the recent UK standardized CAT3, which includes tests of Verbal Reasoning (VR), Quantitative Reasoning (QR) and Non-Verbal Reasoning (NVR). The findings show the mean verbal reasoning score for girls was higher than the mean for boys ("Sex differences in cognitive abilities test scores: a national picture", 2019). Another contemporary research

evaluating gender differences reveal that males score higher than that of females in mechanical reasoning, mental rotations whereas females are better at verbal usage and perceptual speed (2019). The theory of imagery states that people tend to construct visual images where objects are put one above the other. (2019)

Aptitude Test: According to oxford dictionary, “A test designed to determine a person’s ability in a particular skill or field of knowledge.” The test uses standardized methods for quantifying the results, scoring and comparing with other. An abstract reasoning test is conducted to measure one’s ability to reason rationally. Mostly, an abstract reasoning test revolves around measuring nonverbal abilities. Abstract reasoning is an effective means of evaluating general intelligence and the ability to reason rationally. An aptitude test contains multiple questions with patterns and the test is taken under controlled examination conditions. An aptitude test measures skills that are required to detect patterns, trends and solve problems.

Purpose: To observe whether gender plays a role in one’s abstract reasoning abilities.

Variables: Independent Variables (IV): Gender of Participants Dependent Variables (DV) : Scores on the Abstract Reasoning Hypothesis: Based on the previous research and studies, a hypothesis was made for the experiment which was that agenda differences have an impact on the “abstract Reasoni...