Hi,

I am having extreme issues writing a research report that partially gave us information. what we are trying to ascertain is based on two hypothesis; H1 It was hypothesised that the SART performance task will correlate with everyday attentional failures as measured by the CFQ, but the RVIP will not. H2 It was also hypothesised that there would be a faster response time prior to SART errors.

I have done everything up until the end of the procedure, where i need to outline design and analysis. Be it I have overwhelmed myself at this point or the pressures of a time line, i just cannot come up with what I'm supposed to write with regards to the tests used. I am aware that both variables i am testing are numerical/quantative, but I cannot recall what tests i am supposed to use.

Please see the relevant info below to help. I have underlined what I am confused about. Also the t-test results at the end. How am i supposed to describe that information....... any help would be greatly appreciated at this point.

Thank you muchly

Method

Participants

The sample consisted of 107 students at a medium sized Melbourne university, with 80% between the ages of 18 and 29, and 20% between the ages of 30 and 49, who completed all components of the task and participated as part of a unit requirement.

Materials

Participants completed an online experiment containing a sustained attention performance task, a vigilance task, and one self-report scale measuring day-to-day cognitive failures. The details of each measure are described below.

Sustained Attention to Response Test (SART; Robertson et al., 1997)

The SART was implemented as a measure of sustained attention. In the SART procedure, 225 single digits (25 of each digit from 1 through 9) were presented at random, visually over a 4.3-minute period. Each trial began with the presentation of a digit for 250 ms followed by a mask for 900 ms. Participants were instructed to respond with a key stroke when presented with any number 1 through 9, with the exception of the occasions when the digit 3 (target) appeared. For these target trials, the participant was required to suppress their response. Trials requiring a response were referred to as GO trials, whereas trials where the response was suppressed were referred to as NOGO trials. Participants were instructed to give equal focus to speed and accuracy during the task. SART errors were identified as errors of commission, when the participant failure to suppress a response when presented with the target digit (NOGO failure). These errors were then converted to z-scores based on age-based norms reported by Carriere et al., 2010). Errors of omission (GO failures) were also recorded but were not reported here. Mean reaction times for the four consecutive correct non-target responses (GO trials) preceding each correct NOGO suppression were recorded (RTcorrectNOGO), as were mean reaction times for the four consecutive correct non-target responses preceding each NOGO failure (RTfailedNOGO). These values could only be calculated when there were four consecutive correct GO trials to analyse. Finally, mean reaction times for all correct GO responses were also recorded (RTCorrect).

Rapid Visual Information Processing task (RVIP; Wesnes & Wartburton, 1984)

The RVIP was implemented as a sustained attention task involving focused attention to a rapid stream of digits. Three hundred digits (from 1 through 9) were presented at random at a speed of 100 digits per minute. Participants were instructed to respond with a key stroke whenever they were presented with three consecutive odd or even numbers (e.g., 5, 1, 9 or 6, 8, 2). Hits were recorded when consecutive response stimuli were correctly identified, and a proportion of correct responses was calculated such that 0 represents failing to detect any of the target sequences and 1 represents correctly responding to all target sequences.

Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ; Broadbent et al., 1982)

The 25-item CFQ was implemented as a measure of attentional failures in everyday life (e.g., "Do you read something and find you haven't been thinking about it and must read it again?"). For each item participants were asked to indicate on a five-point Likert-type scale the extent to which they make said minor mistake (0 = Never, 1= Very Rarely, 2= Occasionally, 3 = Quite Often, 4 = Very Often). Scores were summed and could range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating a greater frequency of individual attentional failures in everyday life. To facilitate comparison with other studies, CFQ scores were divided by 25 to create a score from 0 to 4.

Procedure

Participants were asked to access the experiment via a link on the Learning Management System of the university. Before starting the experiment, participants were informed about the sequence of tasks in the experiment, and it was a requirement that this be completed in a single block. The Sustained Attention to response Task (SART), was delivered to participants with 18 practice trials followed by 225 experimental trials. The Rapid Visual Information Processing Task (RVIP) was delivered to participants as 20 practice trials follower by 300 experimental trials. The Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ) was given as a survey with 25 items to answer.

Design and Analysis

• correlations between SART scores, RVIP and CFQ
• speed of responding prior to successful NOGO trials (measured by averaging RT of four correct GO trials prior to correct NOGO trials)
• speed of responding prior to NOGO Failure (measured by averaging RT of four correct GO trials prior to NOGO failure trials).
• planned comparison of speed of responding before successful and unsuccessful NOGO trials using paired t-tests.

Results

Information for you to complete your results section has been provided here. The table of data and the figure have been provided for you, but you need to describe what they show.

• Final data from 107 participants
• Screened incomplete data, extremely high error rates indicating lack of commitment to task

Table 1.

Means, standard deviations and intercorrelations for the SART variables, RVIP, and CFQ.

	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6
SART
1. NOGO failure z	-1.10	0.94	-
2. GO failure z	-0.52	0.24	-0.02
3. RTcorrectNOGO	465.27	99.97	-0.33***	0.18	-
4. RTfailedNOGO	372.59	76.39	-0.30*	0.04	0.87***	-
5. RTcorrect overall	450.13	94.75	-0.33***	0.17	0.98***	0.93***	-
6. RVIP	0.40	0.18	0.32***	0.10	-0.09	-0.05	-0.10	-
7. CFQ	1.76	0.49	0.06	0.05	0.05	0.02	0.03	0.11
	Note: N = 107 except for 4, where N = 61, ***p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05

• Pairwise comparisons with paired t-tests, p adjusted for multiple tests:
  • Before Failed NOGO versus Before Correct NOGO t(60) = 9.68, p_adj < .0001
  • Mean GO trials versus Before Failed NOGO t(60) = 10.72, p_adj < .0001
  • Mean GO trials versus Before Correct NOGO t(106) = 8.00, p_adj < .0001

Discussion