1. What is our independent variable? What is our dependent variable?

In this experiment, the independent variable is the interference, or the congruence of the words
and their respective colours. The dependent variable is the reaction time of the subjects to name
the ink colours.

2. What is an appropriate set of hypotheses for this task? What kind of statistical test do you expect
to perform? Justify your choices.

The Null Hypothesis is that the reaction time to name the colours in the congruent list and
incongruent list will be the same

H0 : C = I

The Alternative Hypothesis is that the reaction time to name the colours in the congruent list and
incongruent list will be different ( Could be higher or lower ).

HA : C I

The statistical test that is performed is the Dependent Samples T-Test, as the same subjects are
undertaking the tests twice after a treatment is introduced into the experiment.

3. Report some descriptive statistics regarding this dataset. Include at least one measure of central
tendency and at least one measure of variability.

The Mean of the Congruent data is 14.05 seconds and the Median is 14.36 seconds. The Mean of
the Incongruent data is 22.02 seconds and the Median is 21.02 seconds. The mean and median are
measures of central tendency. The values obtained for the mean and median values in the data set
are quite close, which implies that the sample has a relatively normal distribution. The Standard
Deviation between the two data sets is 4.86 seconds, which is a measure of variability.

4. Provide one or two visualizations that show the distribution of the sample data. Write one or two
sentences noting what you observe about the plot or plots.

Figure 1 - Distribution of Congruent list

Figure 1 shows the distribution of the results obtained for the Congruent Data set. The distribution of
the sample is relatively normal, with the peak at the middle. This shows that the sample selection is a
fairly accurate measure of the actual population.
Figure 2- Distribution of Incongruent Data

Figure 2 shows the distribution of the Incongruent data set. It has a fairly normal distribution.
However, unlike the earlier data set, this set has some outliers in it, which could be caused due to an
error in the test, or perhaps fatigue in the people being experiment, or other extraneous reasons.

5. Now, perform the statistical test and report your results. What is your confidence level and your
critical statistic value? Do you reject the null hypothesis or fail to reject it? Come to a conclusion
in terms of the experiment task. Did the results match up with your expectations?

( )
t-statistic = = (14.05 22.02)/(4.86/sqrt(24)) = -8.03
(/ )

level = 0.05

Therefore as it is a two-tailed test the t-critical value obtained from the t-table will be +-2.069

The Confidence Interval is (-16.36, 16.36)

Since the t-statistic is at a much higher value than the t-critical value, the null hypothesis must be
rejected.

What we can infer from this experiment is that interference in the experiment causes the reaction
time to vary. When the word list was congruent, the reaction time was much smaller than when the
word list was incongruent. The results did match up with my expectations as when I did the test
online, I took a significantly longer time to recognize the words in the incongruent list than in the
congruent one. However, I chose to do a two-tailed test for this experiment as I was unsure
whether the reaction time of the individuals would be more or less after the interference.

6. Optional: What do you think is responsible for the effects observed? Can you think of an
alternative or similar task that would result in a similar effect? Some research about the problem
will be helpful for thinking about these two questions!

I think that the processing of the information in the brain ( what the words say and the meaning of
colours) is responsible for the Stroop Effect. When the colour of the word and its meaning is
different, the brain takes time to process the information. An alternative task for demonstrating the
stroop effect is to write numbers in words and count the number of times the number-word occurs.