What is the hypotheses for each analysis?
In your laboratory report you will need to conduct and report the following analyses using the data in that data file: Analysis 1: Is there is a difference between the red and blue conditions in terms of the number of words recalled correctly? Analysis 2: Previous studies have found people generally recall around 7 words. Regardless of what condition they were in (.e., combining the red and blue groups), did the participants in this study recall greater or fewer than 7 words correctly? Clearly state the hypotheses for each analysis (for this report there are two analyses to conduct) Research hypothesis: What did you predict the results would be based on your review of the literature? (e.g., "It was predicted that...") Null hypothesis: What is your statistical null hypothesis? (e.g., "The null hypothesis was...") - Alternative hypothesis: What is your statistical alternative hypothesis? (e.g., "The alternative hypothesis was...") Background. Over decades many studies have sought to determine the effect of colour on cognitive performance, with inconsistent findings (e.g., Elliot, Maier, Moller, Friedman & Meinhardt, 2007) Stone, 2003). One study by Mehta and Zhu (2009, Study 2) found that performance on a detail- oriented task improved when presented on a red background compared to a blue background. The detail-oriented task used in that study was how many words participants recalled after a delay of 20 minutes. The authors suggest that people remembered more words correctly when they were originally presented on a red background because that colour encourages people to be more risk- averse as they are completing the task (Mehta & Zhu, 2009), Details of the study for laboratory report. In the current research we wanted to investigate whether the effect of colour on performance on a detailed-oriented task would hold when a much smaller delay time was used. We asked participants to memorise a list of 20 randomly generated words. Participants were randomly assigned to view the words on either a red or blue background on a computer screen. We then asked participants to recall the words after an at least three minute wait. The number of words recalled was then assessed. (Note that during the three-minute wait time the participants were asked to complete three unrelated distractor tasks - e.g. "Write down as many words as you can think of starting with the letter L. We are not interested in the answers to those three distractor tasks, so that data will not be further analysed.)
