Stage 2: Data analysis - AssignmentHub



Details of the ordered assignment (TMA02)Experimental mini-project reportCollect and analyze data on the topic of change blindness and write up your findings as an empirical report.Word limit:?2000 words (excluding title, abstract, reference list and any appendices), word limit can go above max 10% which is (in this case) 2200 words maximum without any penalty.Learning outcomesThe following module learning outcomes apply to this TMA:Knowledge and understandingOn completing this TMA, you will have developed knowledge and understanding of:key theories and research within cognitive psychologyselected research methods and types of evidence, and how they are used to develop psychological theoriesthe importance of ethical issues in psychologythe application of psychological theories and research to specific contexts.Cognitive skillsOn completing this TMA, you will be able to:construct arguments with appropriate use of psychological concepts, theories and evidenceevaluate the contributions of different kinds of evidence to psychological knowledgeuse psychological theories and evidence to engage with and justify research questions and hypothesescarry out a quantitative research project and analyse and interpret the findings appropriately.Key skillsOn completing this TMA you will be able to:present psychological material effectively in the form of an empirical report with appropriate referencingwork with quantitative data, including the use of statistical analysis software (SPSS)use information technology to search for, process, prepare and present psychological material as appropriate to the module.Practical and/or professional skillsOn completing this TMA you will be able to:employ evidence-based reasoning to practical, theoretical and ethical issues in psychologycommunicate psychological knowledge and findings in an appropriate way for specific audiencesidentify and prioritize tasks and adhere to a schedule of work supported by the module materials.Relevant materialsThe following resources will be useful in completing your report:Book 2, Chapter 3 from the relevant course book??provide a useful background on research into change blindness.Book 2, Chapter 2?from the relevant course book may also be useful, particularly the discussion on different models of attention.I have attached cover photo and the information about the course book publisher so it will be easier to do references I have attached chapter 2 and chapter 3 in the email, please focus mainly on course book materials when writing the report You will need to identify?a minimum of two relevant peer-reviewed psychology journal articles?that you have found through an independent literature search.Below there are links to articles I have found – feel free to choose two of them for writing the assignment but you can refer to any source of your choice that is relevant and fits the assignment criteria. 1: Data collectionThe ExperimentThe experiment is designed to explore the phenomenon of change blindness, using the flicker paradigm (which you read about in Book 2, Chapter 3) and to investigate whether the type of change made to a scene influences how quickly the change is detected. Participants will view sixteen everyday scenes. Each scene represents an experimental trial. In each trial, two almost identical images appear one after the other, with an intervening blank screen. The images and the blank screen appear for 0.25 seconds each, providing the experience of the screen ‘flickering’ Participants must view the images presented and try to detect whether any change has occurred in the scene. If they believe they have seen a change, they should use the mouse to click on the image to indicate that they have seen it. When a participant clicks the mouse their reaction time is automatically recorded.The aim of this experiment is to explore if change blindness varies according to the type of change that is made to a scene. To test this, three different change types have been made to the stimuli. Only one change is made per trial, and each type of change appears four times. The possible changes present in the trials fall into three different categories:Within-category change:?an object is replaced with another that belongs to the same category (for example, in a kitchen scene, a wooden chopping board might change to a plastic chopping board).Congruent change:?an object is replaced with another that is in keeping with the scene (that is, you would expect to see it in that context), but does not belong to the same category as the original object (for example, a hole punch in an office scene might change to a stapler).Incongruent change:?an object is replaced with an unexpected item (for example, in a dining room scene, a plate might change to a watering can).The order of presentation of these trials is randomised for each participant and all participants view and respond to the same clips. The reaction times for responses are recorded to enable comparison of mean reaction time across the different types of change.To make sure that participants are completing the task correctly and not simply claiming to detect changes in all of the images presented, a safeguard (or control) has been built into the experiment. While three-quarters of the trials have a change occurring in them, a quarter of them do not. Although you do not need this ‘no change’ data for analysis, the module team will use this information to identify any data that is likely to be unreliable: the data from participants who consistently (and incorrectly) ‘identified’ changes in these ‘no change’ trials will be removed by the module team from the data set, so that you can be confident that your data is accurate and reliable.Ethical considerationsPrior to collecting your data, you need to ensure that you are aware of the ethics of this study. You can do this by looking back at resources you have already encountered. Specifically, it is important that participants are made aware of the purpose of the study, understand what they are being asked to do, and are aware that they can withdraw from the experiment at any point. After completing the study it is important that participants are told what the experiment was seeking to investigate and how their data will be used. You should also give them an opportunity to ask any questions they may have. These, and the other ethical considerations you have previously learned about, are important safeguards to protect individuals participating in research. You may also wish to consult the?British Psychological Society’s Code of Human Research Ethics?– which all psychologists need to follow – for further information. As this study has already obtained clearance from the ethics committee, there is no need for you to request clearance again.Once you are clear on the experimental procedure and have the link to the experiment, you are ready to collect data from?one participant, following the guidance provided below.First recruit a participant; someone over the age of 18, except another DE200 student. For example, they could be a friend, relative or colleague. You should gain informed consent from them, using the?form?provided. You should also have the?debriefing material?available for the participant to see once they have completed the experiment.The experiment has already been built for you, enabling you to easily collect data from your participant. Instructions for participants are included in the experiment, but you will also need to explain the procedure to your participant before the experiment begins and answer any questions they may have.You need to understand the rationale behind the experiment and the choice of variables, so that you can answer any questions your participant might have, both before and after they have taken part in the experiment. This information will also be needed in your final report, so it is important that you are aware of these fine details at the data collection stage.Participant data will be automatically saved and added to the existing data set. The data collected this year will be used by DE200 students completing this assignment next year (please be aware that due to covid the data collection from one participant has been abandoned for this year – an SPPS file has been provided with the data collected last year that needs to be used to create statistical output and interpret accordingly in the result section) Stage 2: Data analysisYou will be analyzing data for this experiment that was collected by last year’s DE200 students. The module team have screened the data and divided the overall data set into multiple subsets of data. Every student is allocated a unique data set to analyze. Each data set contains data from 250 participants who completed the experiment and is provided in a pre-formatted SPSS data file (note: you need to have SPSS installed on your computer to open this file).Next, decide which analysis is most appropriate for your data set. If you are unsure about which test to use, then look back at the guidance you were given last week as well as the?statistical decision tree. Remember to consider:how many independent variables (IVs) you havehow many levels your IV(s) havewhether all participants completed all conditions or whether there were different groups of participants.Once you have decided on the relevant statistical test, carry out your analysis. If you need to revise how to do this analysis in SPSS. Once you have completed your analysis, make sure you save both the data file and the output file. You will need to submit your output file along with your completed report.Next, you need to interpret your SPSS output. Once you have identified the relevant output from your analysis you can think about putting together the results section of your report.. Before writing your report, it would also be worthwhile to note down:your IV(s), with levelsyour DVyour hypothesis.You can then note down the relevant statistics from your SPSS output. By putting these details together now, you will have a clear reminder of what you are investigating and what your results are prior to formally writing them up. Remember to also note down the demographic information on the participants in your unique data set (that is, gender, age, and so on).Stage 3: Writing your ReportWhen writing your report, you may find it easier to write the sections in a different order from how they will be finally presented. For example, you may wish to write your Methods section first, followed by the Results, before writing the Introduction and Discussion and finishing with the Abstract. By breaking the report down in this way, you may find the task more manageable, and it will ensure you focus on the specific details required for each section.1. Title Titles should be relatively short (between about 10 and 20 words) and informative. It should give an informative description of what the author has done, but it is also there to catch the audience’s eye. If a title is too vague, or misleading, people might just skip over it. You want people to see the title, understand what it is about and want to read the report.2. Abstract This is a short paragraph (100–150 words maximum) that goes right at the start of the report, under the title. An Abstract summarizes all the other sections and allows a potential reader to decide whether the report will be of interest to them. As such, it needs to be concise and informative. Even though it is the shortest section in the report, it needs to convey to the reader how interesting and perhaps even exciting the research and its findings are. For this reason, you’ll probably find the Abstract included in databases of journal articles.Because the Abstract is a summary of the report as a whole, it has to be written last. As such, we will come back to this later.3. Introduction The Introduction sets out the background and rationale for your research. For TMA 02 you should be aiming to write around 500 words for this section.The main goal of the Introduction to a research report is to explain why you did what you did in a study. As such, the Introduction needs to:outline what has already been done in that particular area of research by other psychologists and researchers – placing your study in contextexplain why your particular study is needed – providing the rationale for the study.To do this, most report introductions include a review of the relevant literature. As part of TMA 02 you will need to identify at least two relevant research papers to include into your write up. These can appear in the Introduction, the Discussion, or both, and should help contextualise and justify your study. As part of your independent study this week, you may want to revisit the library’s guidance on literature searches to remember how to do this. Your tutors will also be able to point you in the right direction with this.Funnel-shaped IntroductionThe Introduction sets out the background and rationale for the research. The Introduction should summarise the existing research around the topic and explain why the current study is needed. In other words, it should explain the gap in the scientific knowledge which this research report will address. A useful way to think about the structure of an introduction is to imagine a funnel, meaning that the argument needs to move logically from introducing the broad general area of your research, through to describing your specific hypothesis.To achieve this funnel-shaped structure, a good Introduction should do the following:Start broadly, introducing the general area of your research.Narrow down your focus to summarise existing literature, presenting relevant theories and research. Be concise and selective, only including research that is strictly relevant to your project.Use existing work to identify a specific need for your study, focusing in on the precise issue under investigation.Present your hypothesis ensuring that it is clear how you derived it and why you are testing it.Thus, the Introduction should ‘set-up’ your study, providing a succinct rationale for your experiment. It should also address the following questions:?How does the study relate to previous research? Why was the study carried out? What specific hypothesis, or hypotheses, is or are being tested?Start off by thinking about the broad area that you are researching (i.e. attention), then narrow it down to focus on the importance of change blindness. You will find relevant content in Chapters 2 and 3 of Book 2 that will help you build your Introduction, but you will also need to identify and highlight other relevant research that supports and justifies your experiment. Remember, you need to build a clear rationale for your study here, and end by stating your hypothesis.Think for a moment about what your hypothesis for TMA 02 would be. Do you expect to find a difference between your experimental conditions? If so, why? You need to provide background research in your Introduction that would support your prediction.4. Methods/Methodology The?Method section?describes exactly how a study was conducted. For TMA 02 you should be looking at about 650 words for the whole of this section. To allow enough detail to be given, the Method is generally split into four sub-sections covering the following themes:Information about the?design?of the study. For experimental research this includes describing what the dependent and independent variables were, how many conditions there were and how the dependent variable was measured.A description of the?participants, including how many people took part, the gender ratio, their ages, their ethnic or racial background (if relevant to your study), how they were recruited for the study and other relevant information.A description of the?materials?used in the study, which includes information about equipment or resources needed to carry out the study, including the stimuli.A detailed account of the?procedure, which describes what was done in the study and in what order.Altogether, the?Method section?should provide other researchers with sufficient detail to allow them to, first, evaluate the method and make an initial judgement about its appropriateness and, second, conduct a?replication. In this way you can think about the method a bit like a recipe; the participants and materials sections are like the ingredients, while the procedure talks you through the steps.We will now take you through each of these sub-sections in a little more depth, to show you how to build a Method section.Design subsectionWhen writing a Design subsection for an experiment you need to provide the following information:What type of study design did you use??For example, was it between- or within-participants; experimental or correlational?What were the variables??For an experiment this means stating the independent and dependent variables.How were the variables operationalised??For an experiment this means stating what the conditions of the independent variable were, and how the dependent variable was measured.Were any controls put in place or confounds eliminated??For example, were any steps taken to limit the potential effects from any variables other than those being measured? Common controls include measures such as using standardised instructions and response sheets,?random allocation?and?counterbalancing.Participants subsectionWhen writing a Participants subsection you need to consider the following questions and provide the relevant information:How many participants took part in the study?How were they recruited? Did they receive payment or any other incentive and how did they give informed consent?Were they were ‘naive’ to this specific experiment and psychological experiments in general?What is the demographic profile of the participants (e.g. including descriptive statistics about gender and age)? Include any information about them that might impact the results.If you have to exclude any participants’ results for any reason (for example, if they didn’t follow the instructions), you would also put this information here.Materials subsectionWhen writing a Materials subsection you need to provide the following information in prose:details of any stimuli used in the study and how they were createddetails of any equipment (including computer software) used in running the study.Often the largest part of the Materials section is a detailed description of the stimuli used in the experiment. So, you need to describe here exactly how these stimuli were constructed. While it may be tempting to provide bullet points, this needs to be done in prose and give enough justification and description that would allow a replication to be carried out. Where possible, include figures to illustrate your stimuli.To give you an idea of what a?Materials subsection?should look like, here is an adapted extract from the Nicholls et al. (2004) paper. As you will not be making your own stimuli for TMA 02, a lot of the content for this subsection will be given to you.Stimuli were filmed and played back using a Canon MVX1 digital video camera. Ten right-handed people whose ages ranged between 18 and 40 years and who spoke English as their first language were used as models. Care was taken to ensure that models’ faces were lit symmetrically during filming. Models were asked to fixate the centre of the camera lens and articulate the following consonant–vowel syllables: ba, ga, pa, and da.To form the control and experimental stimuli, the visual and acoustic components of the video were separated and recombined using FinalCutPro software on an Apple Macintosh G4 computer, taking care to ensure they were temporally matched. The control stimuli consisted of a soundtrack that matched the visual images (e.g., visual ba combined with audio ba, visual ga combined with audio ga). To make the quality of the control stimuli comparable to the experimental stimuli, we dubbed the soundtrack from one example of a given syllable onto the visual image of another example of the same syllable.The experimental stimuli consisted of six cases in which the soundtrack did not match the visual image.These images were then edited so that the right, the left, or neither side of the mouth was covered by a bar. The size of the bar changed according to the size of the speaker’s mouth and covered half of the mouth. The inner edge of the bar was aligned with the horizontal midline of the mouth and extended laterally (see Fig.). Stimuli were displayed on a 280x210 color television monitor coupled with a set of Sennheiser HD40 headphones.Procedure subsectionThis section provides a description of what you did and of the order in which you did it. It is therefore usual to order the?Procedure section?chronologically. Again, you need to decide what information is necessary to allow replication of the experiment and which details are not required. In general, it is usual to include the following information:The instructions that were given to the participants. If brief, a verbatim copy of these should be included here; if they are long they should be put in the Appendices.Whether participants received any practice trials first.Whether the participants took part individually or in groups – and if in groups, how many people there were in each group.How any stimuli were presented (e.g. by hand, one at a time, or on a computer screen).The order in which any stimuli were presented (e.g. were they randomised?).How long any stimuli were presented for.The interstimulus-interval (ISI) – if there was a gap between successive presentations of the stimuli, how long this was.The number of items of stimuli presented.The approximate overall length of the experiment.How any decisions/responses made by the participants were recorded.How the participants were debriefed – i.e. what you told the participants after they had completed the experiment.This last point is important as it relates to ethical guidelines when carrying out research. You will need to show some consideration of ethical issues when writing up your report for TMA 02. 5. Results ?For TMA 02, you will need to put what you have learned into action by running an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and formally writing it up in APA format. Now let’s consider how you might write up the results of an ANOVA carried out to analyse the data collected from the Nicholls et al. (2004) study.A worked exampleThe study design for Nicholls et al.’s (2004) experiment is described below:Design elementDescriptionIndependent variable (IV)One IV: mouth visibilityIV levels (or conditions)Three levels:Right side visibleLeft side visibleWhole mouth visibleDependent variable (DV)McGurk-type errors for the mismatched audio-visual stimulus expressed as a percentage of total number of trialsWithin-participant or between-participant design?Within-participantThe results for this study could be written up as follows:A?one-way repeated-measures ANOVA?was carried out to investigate the impact of mouth visibility on the?McGurk effect. Mauchly's?test of sphericity indicated that the assumption of sphericity had been?met, χ2(2) = .54,?p?> .05. A significant main effect of?mouth visibility?was found (F(2, 58)= 43.25,?p?< .001, ηp2?= .60).?Post-hoc tests?revealed that this effect was due to significantly?fewer errors?occurring in the left-side condition (mean = 19.93, SD = 4.45) than in either the whole-mouth (mean = 30.32, SD = 6.48) or right-side (mean = 27.57, SD = 4.65) conditions (for both conditions?p?< .001). The difference between the right-side and whole-mouth conditions?did not reach?significance (p?> .05). This evidence?supports?the research hypothesis that mouth visibility would significantly affect the proportion of McGurk-type errors participants made. Specifically, these findings suggest that, while the right side of the mouth is as important as the whole mouth in bringing about this illusion, the left side is not.Keep in mind that this section should not exceed 250 words.6. Discussion Provide a summary of your findings, stating the results of the experiment in plain language, without citing the actual statistics.Provide an explanation for the results and describe how they compare with other research in the field (as laid out in the Introduction).If applicable, explain how the findings could be applied in the real world.Critically evaluate the study, pointing out its limitations and strengths. Make suggestionsThe Discussion is the final section of your report, and is where you interpret and give meaning to the results of your study, draw conclusions from the findings, relate them back to the theories and research presented in the Introduction, and consider the limitations of the study. For TMA 02 this section should be around 600 words.At the start of the Discussion, you should always reiterate the findings presented in the Results. While the Results section presents much of the information numerically, the Discussion section should not include any statistics. Instead, it needs to provide a clear statement of the key findings in plain English: in this case, whether or not you found a significant difference between the experimental conditions. When doing this, explicitly relate your findings back to your hypothesis and state what they mean in terms of the specific question(s) you were trying to answer. You should also state whether this prediction was supported and identify any unexpected results.Next, you must also consider what your findings mean. This is where the link between the Introduction and the Discussion comes into play. You need to relate your findings back to the previous research outlined in the Introduction, and specifically to the work that led to you to develop your hypotheses. Do your results support or contradict previous findings on change blindness?Finally, an important feature of any Discussion section is critical evaluation of your study. If your findings are not consistent with previous work, can you think of any reasons why that might be? What are the implications of your findings? What research do you think needs to be conducted in the future to address some of the issues highlighted by your study?Discussion: critical evaluationAn important feature of the Discussion section is the critical evaluation of your own research. You need to keep this in mind when talking about the implications of your study. Instead of just accepting your results as ‘the truth’ (regardless of whether they are significant or not), you need to consider them in the context of the strength and weaknesses of your study. Were there any limitations to your study? Highlight any areas that you think may have been problematic: for example, were there any issues with your method, such as your materials, procedure or way of sampling? And consider who your participants were – are they likely to be representative of the general population?Also, think about whether any alternative explanations could be given for your pattern of results – were there any confounding variables that may have affected the findings? Consider how these issues might affect the meaning, reliability or validity of your results, but also remember that the purpose of evaluating your own work is not to undermine everything you have done: it is just to assess it. Use the Discussion section to highlight the strengths of your study, as well as the limitations, and for any problems you do identify, try to suggest possible solutions.With any potential limitations of your study in mind, make suggestions about future studies that could be done to address them. Remember, however, that the Discussion should consider what worked well in your study, as well as what did not. Your reflection on both of these topics should inform where research in this area could go next.When it comes to writing the?Discussion section?for TMA 02, it is important to cover all of these points. Remember to keep the research you included in your Introduction in mind when writing this section. The?Discussion?should include explicit links back to the studies you cited when introducing your study, and needs to address any issues and hypotheses you highlighted there. Also, remember that one of your key roles as a researcher is to critically evaluate everything: this not only includes previous research in the area, but also your own work.Again, ensure you are selective about what you include in the Discussion. Everything you discuss in this section should be relevant to your research question. To keep yourself on track, make sure you keep the following questions in mind: Do your findings support your hypothesis? What are the implications of your findings? Are there any questions that remain unanswered? How can these be addressed to better answer your research question? What are the take home messages from this work?Revisiting your AbstractOnce you have written your report, you then need to produce your 100-150 word Abstract, which should contain a summary of each of the sections of your report:?Introduction,?Methods,?Results?and?Discussion.7. Appendices and references The Appendices should be the final section of your report, after the References (Figure 1g). The Appendices can be used to provide examples of materials used in your experiment, as well as raw data and relevant sections of SPSS printouts. The Appendices should have a heading and be consecutively numbered: for example, Appendix 1, The experimental stimuli; Appendix 2, Participant instructions; Appendix 3, SPSS output, and so on.ReferencesWhen writing a report, you will need to describe previous research conducted in your area to both justify your study (in the Introduction) and help interpret your findings (in the Discussion). Whenever you refer to previous work, you need to make sure you correctly cite and reference it. To do this correctly, you will need to provide both in-text citations and a full reference (adhering to OU Havard format) in your reference list, which lives at the end of your report. ................
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