We're going to conduct an experiment on attention. First, you will be the participants (and I will be the experimenter), and then you will take over the role of experimenter to analyze the data.

We will do this live in class (in-person and remote), but it will be recorded, so if you are not in class, you can follow along and add your data.

1. Everyone will be assigned to a condition (A or B): If your birth month is odd, you're in condition A, otherwise you are in condition B.
2. Depending on your condition, you will complete a different task while you listen. (open this up in a new tab to have it ready)
   • A:Silently read (whisper) the these tongue twisters:https://www.engvid.com/english-resource/50-tongue-twisters-improve-pronunciation/
   • B:Complete this maze:https://www.mazes.ws/mazes-hard-puzzle-one.htm (you can either print it out, or trace it on a screen with your finger)
   • If you get to the end of your task before the end of the story, start over (repeat the poems, or trace a new path in the maze).
   • You have to really try to complete the task for this to work!
3. Everyone in both conditions will listen to a short news story about perception: (queue this up, but don't start it until you're ready)
   • http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97608445
   • Try to remember as many details as you can about the storythere will be questions about it later.
4. When you have everything ready, hit play on the news story, and then shift to the tab with your distraction task.
5. When the story is over, answer as many of these questions about the story as you can: (write them down on a piece of paper)
   1. What's the name of the NPR segment/feature this story is a part of?
   2. What is the name of the researcher who conducted the study?
   3. What is the lab named?
   4. What university is she from?
   5. Where is she located?
   6. What journal was the study published in?
   7. What kind of device do they use to measure what children are looking at?
   8. The eyes are a ___ to the brain.
   9. Are you better at telling apart colors from the same category or different categories?
   10. What colors does she use to explain this within- vs. across-category perception?
   11. In adults, which hemisphere of the brain is predominantly involved in differentiating different color categories?
   12. What other cognitive ability is argued to influence how we classify colors?
   13. Which hemisphere did the researchers find that children use when classifying colors?
   14. What factor affected whether they used the left or right hemisphere?
   15. What's the name of the theory that learning words can affect how we see the world?
6. Grade yourself according to the answers at the bottom of this page.
7. Enter your total number of questions correct at the bottom of this data sheet (be sure to use the correct column for your condition): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11_C5vY3qICiaaFGSGXt7JbrI08uABMOvriS8XK0cBeg/edit?usp=sharing
8. Use the chart tab of the data spreadsheet to answer the following questions:
   1. What was the difference between the two conditions?
   2. What hypotheses did you have about A and Btry to back these up using concepts from class/lecture/the book.
   3. How did the results of conditions A and B compare?
   4. Why do you think they came out this way?
   5. What conclusions (if any) you draw from the results, and do they have any practical significance?

Answers

1. Science Out of the Box
2. Anna Franklin
3. Baby Lab
4. University of Surrey
5. England
6. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
7. eye tracker
8. window
9. different categories
10. blue and green
11. left
12. language
13. right
14. whether they knew the names of the colors
15. linguistic relativity