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Bio 103, Lab 8, Oneself as a Biological Entity. III. Thinking
In the previous two labs in this series, we've discovered that human behavior takes time, in part because it involves things happening successively in several different parts of an individual, that these happenings can be influenced by a variety of external variables but also to varying degrees by internal ones, and that "thinking" may be a relevant internal variable. We have also, hopefully, become more sophisticated at posing questions, collecting observations relevant to them, and interpreting such observations in relation to questions.
In this lab we want to further build on our experiences by investigating "thinking" itself. Is "thinking" also something that takes time? that can be altered by both external and internal variables? Its an interesting question, first asked explicitly in the late 1800's with a very clever set of observations then requiring elaborate equipment. Today we can make the same observations more easily using computers, as in Serendip's Time to Think exhibit.
The observational set up allows one to measure various kinds of thinking, as well as to test hypotheses about how they are related to one another. Once you get the hang of it, you can/should develop your own hypotheses about what might or might not influence the various kinds of thinking time. And develop your own experiments. Do one as a group in class. And you're free to do additional ones any place you can find a computer. Some further work might make this a good final lab paper.
Remember that we've reached a phase where we'd like to have our hypotheses and observations sufficiently in hand so that we can generate interesting and well-supported interpretations that in turn lead on to further questions and observations.
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A Random Walk
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I wanted to test several
I wanted to test several ideas... I wanted to repeat the lab starting with case 3 then 2 then 1 to see if my results in each case got better, some got better, some got worse, or all got worse.
My baseline averages:
Case 1: 232 milliseconds
Case 2: 245 milliseconds
Case 3: 484.5 milliseconds
Case 4: 724.8 milliseconds
In the case of the class, case 4 could be discounted because there was a loophole in the program that made it easy for us to sidestep actually thinking about negating.
When I retested myself I stared with case 3:
Case 3: 510.3
Case 2: 402.2
Case 1: 327
So I was doing worse on each study than I had done before, going from 1 to 3. Then I did Case 4, just for the heck of a "challenge" (which was exciting because I was getting bored...) I got: 579.3. Which is much better than 724.8, which I got the first time.
I wanted to see if I could do better on this case 3 to case 1 test if I did it again after a nice break during which i ate a Nature's Valley granola bar. Results:
Case 3: 459
Case 2: 291
Case 1: 171
I did better on this one than I did on the first "3 to 1" case, and I actually even did better ("better" means less time, by the way) on case 3 and case 1 than I did on my baseline test. A conclusion I can make from this is that boredom and/or distracting hunger made me react more slowly in the first 3-1 case.
Another idea I wanted to explore was just with case 2. I was wondering about anticipation. I started doing it and was doing terribly, and I felt I had to live up to my baseline standard of 245. The pressure was on, so I started to put the simple directions in my head: "click dark" and that helped a bit. So I was back to being "good" at this-- but then I got about 6 whites in a row, but then I clicked. Then a black came up, and I got 615 milliseconds-- I was way more careful and felt ashamed because I had anticipated the black before... This happened a bunch of times. I'd get on a role with the blacks, getting low times, then there would be a lot of whites... and then I would have a very slow reaction for clicking the black.
Average
Average
For my experiment I decided to watch TV while I performed the experiment, I kept the experiment in my peripheral vision as I was watching television. My reaction time slowed significantly while I watched TV, probably because I needed to visually concentrate on both things.
I thought it was interesting that the difference between both reading times was significantly larger than the difference between the negating times. I think that perhaps the break to commercial had an effect on my reaction time, as the show that I was watching went to commercial during the negation test, maybe because I was less interested in the TV during commercials, my time went down.
thinking, acting, thinking&acting
Initial Data:
Case 1: 323
Case 2: 610
Case 3: 1110
Case 4: 1066
Acting: 323
Thinking: 287
Reading: 490
Negating: -34
= = = = = = =
With Music
Case 1: 300
Case 2: 588
Case 3: 1120
Case 4: 1015
Acting:287
Thinking:565
Reading:1000
Negating:92
I think listening to music, heightened my awareness so that I was able to react slightly faster than when I did in my previous trials. This might also have to do with the fact, that over time, repetition can help improve the speed at which I react to stimuli.
Requeim for Response Time? =|
Introduction: Initital hypothesis
To study factors that affect time to act, think, read and negate, I first recorded observations made with no external disturbance or distraction. In the second part of my experiment, I listened to the piano cover of *Requiem for a Dream* on my iPod and while following instructions on the Time to Think exhibit, I imagined myself playing the piece and made a conscious effort to recall finger positionings, dynamics, articulation etc I use while actually physically playing the piece.. My intitial hypothesis was that.. since I was forcing my brain to actively engage in another activity (imagining the physical act of playing the piano as well as the mental re-inforcement of emotions portrayed through the music), time taken to act, think, read and negate should considerably increase. I believed the multi-tasking of the brain would slow down my rate of response to the exhibit.
Observations
Time taken to respond to the exhibit while listening to music was surprisingly less than time taken in the base trial! This contradicts my initial hypothesis as my brain was performing different tasks, but not at the cost of each other!
Conclusion
The results of my experiment were waaaay different from what I'd anticipated! As response time decreased while listening to music, I feel music actually enhanced alertness and stimulated the brain more. But this confuses me further. Even though the brain does have different regions that perform different functions simultaneously, how does it manage to account for distractions? Perhaps, for a pianist, playing music would not amount to a distraction, but would these results hold true for someone who is not a musician?
Processing and Multitasking...in a different language?
Claire and Paoli
First, as a class, we recorded our times for all four cases in the "Time to Think" game. The first case we just had to act, in the second, we had to think and act, in the third we had to read, think and act, and finally in the fourth we had to read, negate, think and act. Once we did this, we came up with other experiments we could test our processing times.
BASE LINE-AVERAGES
Paoli: Case 1 (249), Case 2 (407), Case 3 (515), Case 4 (1,124)
Claire: Case 1 (250), Case 2 (322), Case 3 (507), Case 4 (546)
In our group, we chose to first test by having one member say the commands aloud (Paoli) to the experimentee (Claire), who would press the button while looking away from the screen. In addition, we did the cases in reverse order. We thought that this might speed up the process as it is easier to listen than to look. However, the times were much slower than Claire's previous averages. We believe that this is because two people had to process the information (Paoli had to read, think, and then say it aloud, while Claire had to listen, process, and act).
Claire: (5 Trials)
CASE #4: 1330, 1035, 1754, 1283, 1007 (AVG. 1,281 milliseconds)
CASE #3: 1004, 833, 755, 766, 913 (AVG. 854 milliseconds)
CASE #2: 897, 655, 605, 891, 750 (AVG. 759 milliseconds)
CASE #1: 627, 627, 605, 599, 499 (AVG. 591 milliseconds)
For our second experiment, Paoli called her grandparents and spoke to them in Spanish while going through the experiment in English. We thought that in particular cases 3 and 4 would be affected, as these ask one to read in English, so she would be reading and processing in English while interacting and talking in Spanish. We found that actually her times sped up. We were confused by this, but we believe that when she was multitasking she was focusing more on the individual tasks ("I'm multitasking, I'd better focus!"), whereas previously she may not have been thinking about the need to focus as she was only doing one thing. She also noted that she is used to multitasking when talking to people on the phone (like going on the computer, checking email).
Paoli: (5 Trials)
CASE #1: 481, 453, 311, 377, 313 (AVG. 387 milliseconds)
CASE #2: 310, 322, 408, 465, 486 (AVG. 398 milliseconds)
CASE #3: 561, 510, 484, 577, 475 (AVG. 521 milliseconds)
CASE #4: 537, 498, 569, 682, 336 (AVG. 524 milliseconds)
CONCLUSION
We believe that the process is slowed down when two people are involved as they both have to process separately. However, based on our data, multitasking may actually increase one's focus on the individual tasks.
Phone Conversation and Reaction Time
Act Think, Act Read, Think, Act Read, Think-Negate, Act
Control 215, 10 247, 10 343, 48 369, 83
Talking to my mom 233, 16 318, 50 457, 118 460, 90
Change in milliseconds 18 71 114 91 (Times in milliseconds, followed by SD)
I tested if talking to my mother would change the reaction times. The data shows a time increase for all four experimental set-ups, but to varying degrees. There was little change in just acting, a larger change when thinking and acting, and even larger changes in the last two set-ups. This may illustrate the way in which a conversation affects various mental processes. Language production and comprehension are two of the more complex processes of the mind, so more advanced activities would not get the attention they need for rapid response. Reading is the hardest to do while talking, because it involves another form of language comprehension (and a less natural one, as writing systems are artificially created, unlike spoken language.)
However, the extent to which a phone conversation plays a factor in speed of thinking and reading comprehension may be overstated by the experiment. The much larger standard devisions mask the data in two ways. First, a large standard deviation means the data is less precise, so the "true" mean may lie within a larger range. Secondly, the incrase in standard deviation may be the result of factors that do not relate to thinking speed or reading comprehension. Talking on the phone decreases the amount of focus on doing the experiment itself, so the subject may be more likely to simply miss the cue when conversing. This could result in several reaction times being much longer than others. For the purposes of the experiment, they would be outliers that should not be counted (but were, due to the nature of the set-up) because they are highlighting a change in a confounding variable. Thus, while there is definitely an increase in reaction time, the extent to which reading comprehension, thinking, and acting were slowed down is unclear.
For our experiment, we chose
For our experiment, we chose to look at the affect talking, or having a conversation with someone, would affect our reaction and thinking rates on Serendip. Specifically, we called our mothers on the phone. Not only can you not ignore your mom, but we also had to deal with the physical distraction of holding the phone. The first trial was without distraction, the second trail occurred while talking on the phone, and then we recorded a third trial to confirm our results. The trials go in this order: Act, Think and React, Read Think and React, and Read Think Negate and React. We recorded the following data:
Initial Trial:
David: 237, 261, 551, 495
Julia: 253, 328, 638, 526
Talking with Mom:
David: 448, 348, 574, 540
Julia: 380, 382, 525, 517
Follow-up Trial:
David: 250, 336, 489, 387
Julia: 242, 323, 506, 436
The overall trend of this data indicates that while we were having a conversation with our mothers, our reaction time increased greatly, and our first two trials were much slower. However, our thinking time over the trials did not increase proportionally. This leads us to theorize that the brain is able to multi-task mentally, but not mentally-physically. In other words, the brain can think multiple thoughts, but as soon as it needs to manifest any of those thoughts physically, the brain needs to focus on that thought and its corresponding physical action. Thus, the reaction time will increase.
Thinking Lab
Time to think?
In this experiment, we attempted to explore Donders’ question: “Is thinking a material process?” through determining the time it takes for one to think, read, and negate a statement. In order to carry out the experiment, we used the Serendip applet “Time to Think,” which records the time in milliseconds that it takes the subject to react, react + think, react + think + read, and react + read + negate +think. The following table represents the average times (in milliseconds) that each of our 2 subjects took to perform each task.
Case
Average Time (milliseconds)
Standard Deviation
Isolated “Variables”
1: Reaction
244
262
12
30
244
262
2: Reaction + Thinking
354
368
88
81
90
106
3: Reaction+Thinking+Reading
484
560
54
145
130
192
4: Reaction + Thinking + Reading + Negating
591
610
149
n/a
107
50
Our findings suggest that
After performing the first phase of the experiment, we asked the question: “How will talking on a cell phone change the respective time measurements?” In order to explore our question, we carried on a lengthy phone conversation with each other while one reenacted the case tests. We hypothesize that talking on a cell phone will slow the reaction, reading, and negating times as well as the average times for each case. Below is a table representing our findings and the differences between the independent (1st) trial and the affected (2nd) trial.
Case
Average Time
Standard Deviation
Isolated “Variables”
Difference from trial 1a avg
Difference from trial 1a isolated variables
1: Reaction
578
313
578
316
316
2: Reaction + Thinking
504
190
-74
164
-180
3: Reaction+Thinking+Reading
843
175
339
283
147
4: Reaction + Thinking + Reading + Negating
1228
992
385
618
335
As the tables above would suggest, talking on a cell phone had an overall significant effect on both average and isolated variable measurements.
Why is this important? This simulation is remarkably similar to the experience of driving and talking on a cell phone. When driving, one has to react to pedestrians and other cars and read/interpret traffic signs and stop lights. The changes from table 1 to table 2, which represent the slowed reaction, reading, and interpreting times while talking on a cell phone, suggest that talking on a cell phone while driving reduces reacting, reading, and interpreting skills and is obviously dangerous.
-Anna and Lili
Music, thinking, reading, and reacting
In our experiment we tested the effects of listening to music on reacting, thinking, reading, and reading-negating. We did a preliminary experiment, and collected the results for the average time it took us to react, think, read, and read-negate. Next we listened to a Youtube clip of 20 heavy metal bands while doing our trial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKq8S1N2ryw). We then did the experiment with no music once again, then with music again. We then took all four trials of data and analyzed our results.
For Terrible2s:
Their results all ended up being similar, showing no significant changes between trials.
For HM:
There does exist a minute difference between the non-music/music results. I have appeared to have been faster without music.
For DC:
Time to Act, Time to Read, and Time to Negate consistently went down when I was listening to music. However, Time to Think consistently went up.
Results may have varied due to subjects becoming used to the trials, subjects becoming tired, or other similar factors.
Lab 8
Our data for this lab was a little different than we thought it would be. Although the times did increase when we had to think about the different shades of the boxes, and when we had to read the instructions, for one of us the times were lower when we had to to do the trial with negation. We were definitely not expecting that to happen, and we're unsure as to why doing the opposite seemed to come easier to one of us than following instructions.
For our second set of trials, we chose to add a distraction to the experiment. Instead of doing these silently, we thought the results would change if the other person talked to the one doing the experiment. This didn't present very much of a difference, but when we decided to fully engage in a conversation, the difference was much more apparent. We chose a conversation as opposed to listening to music, because we figured that the subject would eventually become accustomed to the music, but would always need to react in order to continue the conversation.
In order to make sure that our results in the second set of trials were not just a fluke or a result of us growing more comfortable with the experiment, we did another set of trials that were exactly like the first. Although these times were a little different than the ones with which we started, they were still completely different than when we were being distracted by the conversation.
In the end our results were what we expected. The conversation made it more difficult to react accurately to what was going on. It was more difficult to press the button, and pay attention to the directions if we were also trying to concentrate on other things. It was already difficult enough to pay attention to the directions on their own, but when we were talking we would sometimes look away from the computer screen or completely forget that we were supposed to be waiting for instructions and we'd either click at the wrong time or just click way too late.
mfmiranda, jpierre