As Table 1 shows, the mean reaction time to visual stimulus is greater than the mean reaction time to auditory stimulus. The chi-squared value of 9.600 in Table 2 allows us to reject our null hypothesis that there is no difference between auditory and visual reaction times. This result is consistent with our predicted outcome and it also supports Brebner and Welford (1980). Reaction time to a stimulus depends on many factors, including the reception of the stimulus by the eyes, the transmission of a neural signal to the brain, muscular activation, and finally, the physical reaction to the stimulus (Pain and Hibbs, 2007). The reaction times to auditory stimulus were shorter than to visual stimulus, implying that the auditory stimulus reaches the motor cortex …show more content…
faster than the visual stimulus reaches the motor cortex (Shelton and Kumar, 2010). In addition, it could mean that the number of synapses in the visual pathway is greater than the number in the auditory pathway, leading to faster auditory reaction times (Solanki et al., 2012). However, there are many factors that could have affected our results.
We only obtained ten reactions from each subject, so any outliers in the results could cause great discrepancies in the calculated mean values for each test. In the future, each subject should preform each test a greater number of times to obtain a large data set that is resistant to outliers. Another bias in the experiment could be caused by gender differences. Our subjects consisted of four females and two males, which may have affected our results. The reaction time for both auditory and visual stimulus is shorter for males than for females (Engel, 1972). Because we had more female subjects than male subjects, our data might be skewed towards slower reaction times for both tests. In addition, the lab was a bit loud. Therefore, the auditory reactions could have been biased towards slower times because it could have been difficult to hear the auditory stimulus. Future investigations would account for this excess noise, ensuring that the testing location is quiet and that the subjects can adequately hear the auditory stimulus. Visual reaction times are faster when the subject is directly looking at the stimulus (Brebner and Welford,
1980). Therefore, in future experiments, the subjects should all directly face at the computer screen to obtain consistent visual reaction times. Studies also show that faster reaction times can be achieved if reflexes were tested instead of simple functions such as pressing a key on a keyboard (Pain and Hibbs, 2007). In order to achieve faster auditory reaction times, we could make subjects preform reflexive tasks in response to auditory stimulus. Athletic subjects generally have faster reaction times than sedentary subjects, so it will be interesting to see how the reaction times change when all of the subjects have the same lifestyle (Welford, 1980). Studies can also test reaction times when subjects encounter auditory and visual stimuli at the same time, as opposed to individually. This will show how visual and auditory senses interact with each other. In the future, other variables such as age and eyesight should be controlled so that they do not sway the reaction times. All the subjects should be the same age, and they should have relatively the same eyesight. They should also have the same amount of sleep so that sleep deprivation does not play a prominent role in the differences in reaction times.
One topic that is a big part in the experiment, testing how reaction time is affected by the influence of peppermint candy, is reaction time. Reaction time can be defined as the amount of time an organism takes to respond to stimulus, or a thing or event that evokes a specific functional reaction in an organ or tissue. For example, the International Encyclopedia of The Social Sciences explained reaction time
After watching the video ‘Through Deaf Eyes’ I’ve gained a better insight into the history of not only deaf people, but deaf culture as well. Even after our eight week course on deaf culture I was still able to be surprised, shocked, and fascinated, and educated by this video. ‘Through Deaf Eyes’ serves a reminder of all the things we learned throughout the semester and those who are familiar with dead history, but a great learning tool for those who are uneducated on the subject matter.
Do you ever want to hit that triple pirouette? Or hold your arabesque for over thirty seconds? In order to do both those things, you need to have great balance. My science fair project demonstrates the effect of sight and balance. My scientific question is: How does changing dancer’s eyesight affect their balance? I will be eliminating sight completely, create tunnel vision, exclude the use of their dominant eye, lower the amount of light, distort their vision, and flash strobe lights above the dancers.
The effects of perceptual load on the occurrence of inattentional blindness were demonstrated clearly by experiment. In an experiment conducted by Finch and Lavie in 2007, participants were given identical series of central cross-targets with two arms of clearly different color (blue and green) and slightly different length. Participants were split in two groups, one performing an easy task (low load condition) and the other a harder task (high load condition). The group performing the easiest task only had to make color discrimination between the tw...
The independent variables in this experiment are the time and the foils presented to the subject. The dependent variable is the discrimination index. The...
Lu, Z.-L., Williamson, S.J., & Kaufman L. (1992, Dec 4). Behavioral lifetime of human auditory
...orthy (2012) completed a narrative review. This article was not classified as a systematic nor integrative, although the research was comprehensive. Edworthy (2012) completed a review including many of the traditional medical literature databases such as PubMed and Web of Knowledge. She additionally searched in the PsychINFO and human factor journals. Her strategy was to examine the available research specific to auditory alarm response time. Fifty eight articles were cited in this review. This article represented a comprehensive narrative by an expert in the specialty area. The author had twenty-five years experience as a researcher and designer in the area of audible alarms. Her findings suggested a significant improvement in response to alarms when greater emphasis is placed on the alarm design (Edworthy, 2012). She recommended standardization of alarms.
to different sounds or movement. The researchers found that on monkeys when they heard or
The past research about the effect of music on the brain is called the Mozart Effect. The Mozart Effect refers to claims that people perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to music composed by Mozart. This experience examined whether the Mozart effect is a result of differences in stimulation and temper. (William Forde Thompson, E. Glenn Schellenberg and Gabriela Husain, 2001). A research was made by Dr.Gordon Shaw at UCI and Fran Rauscher about this Mozart effect. The experience is to use college students who listened to Mozart’s symphonies while they are solving a spatial temporal task. This task is a famous one: the paper folding and cutting test. The results were astonishing. In fact, all the students recorded impressi...
Brain Stem Reflexes refer to a process where an emotion is induced by sound or music because the fundamental acoustical characteristics of the sound or music are received by the brain stem which signals a potentially urgent and important event. Sounds that are sudden, dissonant, loud, or have fast temporal patterns induce arousal or feelings of unpleasantness in the listener (Berlyne 1971; Burt et al. 1995; Foss et al. 1989; Halpern et al. 1986). These responses show the impact of auditory sensations (music as sound in the most basic sense). Our perceptual system is continually scanning the immediate surro...
Macleod and Mathews (1991) induced attentional biases within a laboratory setting to determine that a ca...
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 40(4): 225-240. Massaro, D. W. & Warner, D. S. (1977). Dividing attention between auditory and visual perception. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 21(6): 569-574. Muller, N. G.; Bartelt, O. A., Donner, T. H., Villringer, A. Brandt, S. A. & Brandt, S. A. (2003).
Visual perception and visual sensation are both interactive processes, although there is a significant difference between the two processes. Sensation is defined as the stimulation of sense organs Visual sensation is a physiological process which means that it is the same for everyone. We absorb energy such as electro magnetic energy (light) or sound waves by sensory organs such as eyes. This energy is then transduced into electro chemical energy by the cones and rods (receptor cells) in the retina. There are four main stages of sensation. Sensation involves detection of stimuli incoming from the surrounding world, registering of the stimulus by the receptor cells, transduction or changing of the stimulus energy to an electric nerve impulse, and then finally the transmission of that electrical impulse into the brain. Our brain then perceives what the information is. Hence perception is defined as the selection, organisation and interpretation of that sensory input.
Auditory processing is the process of taking in sound through the ear and having it travel to the language portion of the brain to be interpreted. In simpler terms, “What the brain does with what the ear hears”(Katz and Wilde, 1994). Problems with auditory processing can affect a student’s ability to develop language skills and communicate effectively. “If the sounds of speech are not delivered to the language system accurately and quickly, then surely the language ability would be compromised” (Miller, 2011). There are many skills involved in auditory processing which are required for basic listening and communication processes. These include, sensation, discrimination, localization, auditory attention, auditory figure-ground, auditory discrimination, auditory closure, auditory synthesis, auditory analysis, auditory association, and auditory memory. (Florida Department of Education, 2001) A person can undergo a variety of problems if there is damage in auditory processing . An auditory decoding deficit is when the language dominant hemisphere does not function properly, which affects speech sound encoding. (ACENTA,2003) Some indicators of a person struggling with an auditory decoding deficit would be weakness in semantics, difficulty with reading and spelling, and frequently mishearing information. Another problem associated with auditory processing is binaural integration/separation deficit. This occurs in the corpus callosum and is a result of poor communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. (ACENTA,2003) A person with this will have difficulty performing tasks that require intersensory and/or multi-sensory communication. They may have trouble with reading, spelling, writi...
Perception is a mysterious thing; it faces a lot of misconception, for it can merely be described as a lens, as it decides how someone views the events happening around them. Perception is the definition of how someone decides to use their senses to observe and make conceptions about events or conditions they see or that are around them. Perception also represents how people choose to observe regardless if it’s in a negative or positive way. In other words, perception can be described as people's cognitive function of how they interpret abstract situations or conjunctures around them. All in all, perception can do three things for someone: perception can change the way someone thinks in terms of their emotions and motivations, perception acts