Testing the Theory of Multitasking

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Recommended: Stroop effect experiment 1935

This experimental investigation has to do with how human’s attention work. It is based on a replication of the well-known “Stroop Effect” carried out on 1935 by John Ridley Stroop. The aim of this experiment was to demonstrate how hard it is for a person’s attention to be divided in different tasks, by making the participants read a series of three stimuli which consisted of: 1) words of colors in black ink, 2) words of colors in their actual font color, and 3) color words with different ink, where the participant read the font instead of the word present. The research hypothesis supposed that selective attention is as easy to be performed visually as well as audibly. The controlled variable of the experiment were the black ink color words, while the second stimuli was considered to be experimental variable. There were two independent variables that were the color words corresponding to their color and the number of mistakes each participant made in each category. The dependent variable was the third stimuli, where the participant read its font rather than the word presented. The experiment was completed within a group of sixteen participants from an age range of 13-16 (eight girls and eight boys in total). The average time and mistakes in each variable was the following: 9.28 seconds with no mistakes, 9.53 seconds with one mistake, and 25.53 seconds and an average of two mistakes. In conclusion, the observations were that it took much more time in the last stimuli, which was the one that divided attention into two tasks. Implication findings would be the modicum amount of participants in the experiment. The aim of the experiment was to discover the implications attention has when it is used in two different tasks. This inve... ... middle of paper ... ...me day at almost the same time. They were also tested one at a time, while the others stayed in a classroom being unexposed to what they would do when it was their turn. If the words are given in the participant’s natal language, there would be a greater reliability of results since it was their most proficient language. Two of the participants had the experiment conducted at a later hour on another environment. Works Cited "BACKGROUND ON THE STROOP EFFECT." Rochester Institute of Technology. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. . "BDoughertyAmSchool - IB information - grade 11." BDoughertyAmSchool - home. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. . "Participant Selection -." Participedia. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. .

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