fandomhigh | Abnormal Psychology (Thursday, 1:00 p.m., 12/15/2005)

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psychology

Abnormal Psychology (Thursday, 1:00 p.m., 12/15/2005)

There is a note on the whiteboards:

Sign in and go work on your experiments. By next Tuesday, I need the following answers as the completion of your final project:

1. What were your results?
2. Did the majority of your results (more than 50%) match your hypothesis and predicted result? Please include at least one example. (OOC: A link is OK if you don't want to write it out.)
4. If your results did not match your predicted result, what would you change about your experiment?
5. What did you like or dislike about the experiment you chose?

OOC: I was going to have you guys do a paper, but hopefully this is easier. Please post your results in this thread by next Tuesday. I'll post final grades on Wednesday. There'll be a comment thread for link drops if you have them, and those will increase your final ~~fake~~ score.

OCD comment threads ~~coming shortly~~ are sort of up. Some of them aren't showing up, and I don't know why. If a bunch of threads all titled the same suddenly show, now you know why.

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...

Jack signs in.

Vala signs in and proudly hands in the project she wrote up last night ~~and zomg hopes it passes because she didn't have the questions then!~~

*glees* I love what you did, though.

~~*bows*~~

Draco signs in.

Cameron signs in.

Broots signs in.

((Jessica: Can you do the essay? Mun is having day from hell and probably won't have any spare time till she leaves. Sorry. Life bites.))

((Sure thing. The results have been unscreened (http://www.livejournal.com/users/lady_jessica_bg/3499.html), by the way.))

((The timed people did better...?! Wow, they weren't supposed to. *g*))

Anders signs in and takes a seat by Vala, hoping she has some cookies left from the experiment.

Sadly Vala let Cam scarf the leftovers until he fell asleep, and then took them to the comfort-Aeryn girly non-party last night and has none left.

Jessica signs in electronically.

Jack signs in ~~and mentally bangs his head against the wall for an hour.~~

Faith does not sign in, as she is ~~teaching the gremlins how to square dance~~ ~~writing 'for a good time, call spider jerusalem!' on the walls~~ ~~running naked through the hallway~~ ~~conducting a passionate affair with half the school in her room~~ discontinuing her educational experience at Fandom High.

((much love for the class, though))

((Thank you! OMG, I will so miss you in this game, too. You've been an amazing player.))

Raven signs in.

Callisto signed in electronically.

Here's where you answer the questions about your final project.

Anders/Mal Doran Final Project, Abnormal Psych, Fall 2005

We set up a table in the lobby of the dorms with a big sign offering "Free Cookie Taste Test!" (http://www.livejournal.com/community/fandomhighdorms/318462.html#comments) Anyone who stopped by was asked to try one cookie from each of two identical plates, one prominently labeled "Regular NPC Company Holiday Cookies!" and the other labeled "New Recipe NPC Company Holiday Cookies!", and asked to give their preference.

Of eleven respondents, two failed to give an answer at all, leaving nine actual subjects. Of these, five declared their preference for "original", two for "new", and only two claimed to be unable to choose/tell the difference.

In actuality there was no difference between the cookies from the two trays except for the labeling we had added, having all come from the same single bulk bag of NPC Brand Holiday cookies. Interestingly enough, when led to believe that the two trays comprised different recipes, seven of nine people claimed to be able to tell the difference and to have an actual preference for one over the other.

Even more interesting, one subject (http://www.livejournal.com/community/fandomhighdorms/318462.html?thread=11456510#t11456510) initially claimed to have trouble telling the difference, but then -- without any prompting -- committed to a definite choice between the "two" types. This demonstrates not only the power even the most simple marketing can have over peoples' perceptions (in the over all response patterns), but also highlights the peer pressure present in such a situation to make a definitive choice (as in the case of the last respondent).

Cameron hands in the paper for Raven/Mitchell Final Project, Abnormal Psych. It discusses the results at great length and gives a well thought out explanation to explain them.

((I can pretty much guarantee she'll be fine with it.))

(We're good. I'm just now surfacing from finals and feeling absolutely horrible about not having gotten back to you sooner.)

Broots/Atreides

In our experiment, we had five volunteers complete a series of three Sudoku puzzles of varying difficulty. All were timed, three knowingly and three unknowingly. The object was to determine if ordinary humans are better at problem-solving under pressure.

As you can see here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/lady_jessica_bg/3499.html),
the 2 "untimed" subjects took from about 30 minutes to 4 hours, whereas the 3 timed subjects took from about 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Broots had predicted that the timed subjects would be slower; however, we found this to be false, as in the case of our slowest timed, John, to our slowest untimed, Ivanova. However, we also found that the majority of times were in the 30-35 minute range, so it is also possible that native problem-solving ability has more to do with results than pressure or the lack of pressure.

If we were to change any details of the experiment, we would probably reconsider the sample size. Our volunteers were gathered on short notice, and so the range of abilities within our volunteers probably affected the experiment results more than it should have.

We liked the experiment because who really doesn't enjoy a good logic puzzle now and then? Besides, it probably tests mental abilities better than, for example, a spelling bee.

Callisto/Jack O'Neill's Final Project, Abnormal Psych report is well written and has several hypotheses as to why the results were what they were.

The flip side is covered with various little drawings of hockey games.

For

time_agent and

the4thsister:

Hypothesis: Competitiveness increases retention

Experiment: Two groups. Both groups are given a list of words to memorize
for a set amount of time. The list is then taken away. One group (the
control group) is asked to recite as many of the words on the list that
they remember. The other group is asked the same thing, but at the
beginning of the experiment were also given some sort of tangible object
(bean, poker chip, etc.) equal to the number of words on the list. They
are told that for every word missed (either forgotten or misremembered),
they will lose one of their chips. Whoever has the most chips at the end
"wins".

Expected result: The second group will display a statistically higher
ability to retain the list of words.

Tasks - Change the toughness of words the group have to remember, ie
really simple words, cat, dog etc and harder works like hypothermia etc-
would the harder words stick out more and be remembered more easily or
the easy ones since they're more well know? My guess simple words would
be remembered more.

Difficult Words - Hypothermia, Physiology, Concrete, Sedative,
Predicament, Laminate, Vocabulary, Condemnation, Sanctuary, Hypocrite,
Exaggerate, caffeinate, encyclopaedia, dinosaur, tentative, legislation,
participation, progressive, appropriate, spontaneous

Easy Words - Cat, Bag, Lost, Why, House, Car, Blue, Sing, Ball, Frog,
Shirt, hot, big, lick, crime, you, pen, sexy, play, light.

Findings- We found that the chance of winning a prize did not
significantly improve the number of words recalled, the most interesting
thing we found during out experiment was that at least one of the
participants made use a mnemonics to remember all 40 words (20 in the
easy set, 20 in the difficult), this gives us clues about how memory
works, though does not say anything about whether the participants
competitiveness affected this.

Also most people remembered more of the easy words than the difficult
ones as I expected, although it seems that the suggestion that the hard
words would stand out more and thus may be recalled more easily
was true for one participant who recalled all 20 but forgot 2 of the easy
words.

Jenny stops by after class ends to pick up the sign-in sheet. She may or may not have been having fun in the teacher's lounge today. You might be able to catch her and ask her questions, though.

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Abnormal Psychology (Thursday, 1:00 p.m., 12/15/2005)

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After Class Ends