Embedded Files
Past Projects:
Past Projects:
Flier Study
Description: Preliminary designs for the Flier Study began in 2011, with participant data collected from Spring 2016 until the study concluded. A total of 48 participants took part, with 31 completing the first build and 17 completing the second. The study took between 15 to 30 minutes to complete and consisted of two parts: first, participants viewed 12 fliers and answered related questions; second, they filled out a survey. During the eye-tracking portion, the eye tracker monitored participants’ eye movements to determine which areas of the screen they viewed at specific moments.
Principle Investigators: Jane Acierno, Eva Harmon, Mira Leese, Natalie Spanos
Related Articles: Health Message Framing , Emotion Induced Engagement , Attention to Responsibility
Judging Numbers and Words
Description: Judging Numbers and Words was created in Spring 2017 and ran for several years. A total of 74 participants took part in the study, with data from 60 participants being analyzed. The study took approximately 40 minutes to complete and involved participants making size comparisons between numbers and words on a computer screen (e.g., "Which is larger, 7 or 4?"). No eye tracking was involved, and response time served as the primary measurement.
Principle Investigators: Jane Acierno, Garrett Salzman, Mira Leese
Reading Short Stories
Description: The Reading Short Stories (RSS) study began as a capstone project in 2014. Two versions were developed based on the original experiment. A total of 57 participants completed version one, while 42 participants completed version two. The study, which took approximately 30 minutes to complete, was an eye-tracking experiment in which participants read a series of short passages and answered comprehension questions. Measurements included gaze duration and regressions into interest areas around words in the passages.
Principle Investigators: Jane Acierno, Garrett Salzman, Natalie Spanos
Listening to Stories
Description: This study investigated how individuals process language while listening to stories. Participants listened to a series of short stories through headphones while looking at a blank computer screen. After each story, they were presented with probe words that were either present or absent from the story and indicated whether they had heard the word. Eye movements were tracked throughout the process, and reaction times to the probe words were measured. The study took approximately 35 minutes to complete and involved 64 participants. It was last run in Spring 2017.
Principle Investigators: Jane Acierno, Brooke Lea, Natalie Spanos
Recognizing Words
Description: The Recognizing Words study was designed in Spring 2017 and has been running since that time. 48 participants to date, 10 minutes to complete the study. Participants view a series of phrases on a computer screen followed by words that either did/did not appear in the phrase. Participants identify if the word did/did not appear. This study does not directly involve the eye-tracker and instead is concerned with measuring reaction time
Principle Investigators: Jane Acierno, Emily Sanford, Eva Harmon
Listen Up
Description: Does our mental representation of space or our typical ways of using words have a stronger influence on how humans understand speech? This study tests how hearing some words can cue attention either up or down. Participants hear a word and then respond to a probe that appears at the top or the bottom of a screen, so that it either matches or mismatches the direction cued by the word. Response times are analyzed to see whether language use frequencies or spatial representations better predict reaction times.
Principle Investigator: Alena Hejl, Brooke Lea
Eye Tracking and Police Lineups
Description: The Department of Justice suggests the use of an appearance change instruction (ACI) before an eyewitness views a lineup (the ACI informs eyewitnesses that the culprit’s appearance may have changed since the time of the crime). Although the practice is widely used by police departments, there is little empirical evidence regarding its effectiveness. In this study, we replicate and extend the findings of a study on the influence of the ACI on lineup identification accuracy. If the ACI is accomplishing the intended effect, it should result in more accurate identification decisions. This study also examines whether the presence or absences of the ACI influences the facial features on which eyewitnesses tend to focus.
Principle Investigator: Nancy Steblay
Research Assistants: Charles Olson, Farrell Meehan, Carolyn Fritz, Amineh Safi, Elizabeth Mattos, and Casey Gintner
The Influence of Hair Length and Color on Attentional Focus and Perception
Description: Evolutionary theory suggests that males should desire mates who are youthful, healthy and attractive. We first investigated the possibility that hair color and length might serve as signals to these underlying characteristics. We further explored the possibility that these differences in perceptions might be driven by increased or decreased attention to certain facial features. To test these hypotheses, we tracked men’s eye movements while viewing images of women whose hair varied in length and color. Preliminary results generally indicate that both hair length and color can influence perceptions of desired characteristics and that darker hair tends to draw attention toward facial features.
Principle Investigator: Dave Matz
Research Assistants: Hillary Manning, Susanna Petaisto, Amber Wahlstrom, and Jartue Kroma
Clock Checking
Description: Our Primary objective is to examine how attention to time, or " clock checking" behavior, is mediated by one's level of cognitive engagement or motivational state. Participants are shown a series of images and are asked to find a number of hidden objects in each scene. Some participants are motivated with the possibility of winning prizes for their performance, while others are not. Accompanying each scene is a clock display indicating time remaining to complete the task. While they seek out the objects (or the clock), their eye movements are monitored to evaluate the number of times the attention is diverted to time, as opposed to the task at hand. Using this basic experimental framework we may analyze the degree to which one seeks temporal information in different motivational or cognitive contexts, and whether different motivational constraints encourage or discourage participants to seek out temporal feedback.
Principle Investigator: Ben Denkinger
Research Assistant: Becky Christensen
Antisaccade Task Error Rate and Substance Use
Description: Disinhibitory disorders, including substance use disorders and antisocial behavior, reflect a spectrum of behaviors characterized by low inhibitory control potentially associated with abnormal neurobehavioral functioning. We developed a laboratory paradigm to investigate the link between neurobehavioral disinhibition and substance misuse (e.g., excessive alcohol consumption). Levels of disinhibition are assessed using the antisaccade task where individuals must willfully override involuntary eye movements. We believe that participants who engage in more maladaptive substance use will make significantly more errors on this task than those who do not misuse substances.
Principle Investigator: Henry Yoon
Research Assistants: Devon Ellena, Hien Nguyen, Emily Rutten, and Mary Stewart
Curriculum
Curriculum
Context and Anomaly Study
This study is designed to be a lab for the Psychology of Language class at Macalester College. It is a laboratory version of the experiment done by Warren, McConnell, and Rayner (2008). The purpose of the experiment is to improve our understanding of the language comprehension system. In particular, the study is looking at when, if at all, context influences linguistic processing. On the one hand, a large body of research suggests that the language processing system is made up of separate modules. Thus, when a word is processed, first its semantic features are accessed without the integration of real-world knowledge or context. On the other hand, another body of research provides support for the notion that contextual information and general knowledge can influence the initial processing of a word.
In order to test which of the two theories is true, the researchers (Warren et al., 2008) presented participants with multiple short stories. They controlled for the plausibility of the presented event, possible vs. impossible, as well as for the context in which it was described, fantasy vs. real-world. They used eye tracking data to demonstrate that context does not affect the initial semantic features of words accessed by readers. However, context turns out to be strong enough to moderate the unnaturalness of an impossible event in a fantasy context (2008). These findings suggest that context influences language processing at a later stage of comprehension.
By reading, researching, and participating in this experiment our students are going to be familiarized with a large body of research regarding lexical access, context integration, anomaly detection in discourse, modularity in language processing, all of which are central to the field of psycholinguistics. Furthermore, this experiment exposes students to the eye tracking methodology that is gaining popularity in the field due to the precision of the results and the great possibilities it offers.
References
Warren, T., McConnell, K., & Rayner, K. (2008). Effects of context on eye movements when reading about possible and impossible events. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34,1001-10. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.34.4.1001
Context-and-Anomaly-Deployed.zip
Task Dilation Study
The Task Dilation Study is a laboratory version of the study described in Pupillary, heart rate, and skin resistance changes during a mental task (Kahneman, Tursky, Shapiro, & Crider, 1969). There is evidence demonstrating that the process of problem solving is associated with activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Also, studies have shown that changes in pupil size occur during different mental activities. Based on this, Kahneman and his colleagues (1969) made second-by-second measurements of pupil dilation, heart rate, and skin resistance while participants were performing tasks with three levels of difficulty. Their results indicate that the more difficult the mental tasks, the more the pupils of the participants dilate (1969).
Our laboratory version of the study is designed for the Cognitive Psychology class at Macalester. It will expose students to the eye tracking methodology used in cognitive research. In addition, students will be instructed and trained how to work with the eye tracker and how to run participants, which would provide them with the opportunity to see how actual research in the field is done.
References
Kahneman, D., Tursky, B., Shapiro, D., & Crider, A. (1969). Pupillary, heart rate, and skin resistance changes during a mental task. Journal Of Experimental Psychology, 79, 164-167. doi:10.1037/h0026952
Emotion Dilation Study
The Emotion Dilation Study is designed with the idea to be combined with the Task Dilation Study. It is supposed to show students how the same measure can be used to demonstrate different processes. This study is a laboratory version of Bradley, Miccoli, Escrig, and Lang’s (2008) experiment exploring pupil dilation associated with emotional arousal. In their original experiment, they presented participants with multiple pictures in three conditions: pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant hedonic valence. They controlled for the luminosity of the images and did a moment-to-moment analysis of pupil dilation, skin conductance, and heart rate. They were trying to answer the question of whether the hedonic valence of the emotion portrayed in the pictures, pleasant or unpleasant, would have a different effect on pupil dilation (2008). Previous research presents conflicting evidence on the topic with some researchers finding different effects depending on whether the emotion is pleasant or unpleasant, while others finding that the hedonic valence does not matter as long as the intensity of the emotion, positive or negative, is the same. The results that Bradley et al. (2008) obtained showed that regardless of whether the picture was pleasant or unpleasant it led to more pupil dilation compared to neutral pictures.
By participating in the Emotion Dilation Study and reading about, our students would be able to get a sense of how cognitive processes can be studied using the eye tracking methodology. Furthermore, students will also be trained how to run participants and to work with the eye tracker, which would give them a sense of how research is done.
References
Bradley, M. M., Miccoli, L., Escrig, M. A., & Lang, P. J. (2008). The pupil as a measure of emotional arousal and autonomic activation. Psychophysiology, 45, 602-607. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00654.x
Emotion-Dilation-without-Pictures.zip
*This study is posted without pictures due to the copy write on those images. We found our images on iaps and can provide a list of images we used if asked.
Gender-Occupation Stereotype Study
This study is based on research done by Duffy and Keir (2004). The original study found that a role name like electrician (a stereotypically male profession) paired with a female reflexive pronoun (the electrician taught herself…) causes comprehension difficulty (as shown by inflated dwell times around the pronoun). This indicates that we activated the gender stereotype as soon as we saw the role name. Duffy and Keir went on to examine the effect of discourse context (role names and pronouns mixed into larger paragraphs) on the activated gender stereotype, but, for the sake of simplicity, our laboratory experiment just looks at single sentences.
The Gender-Occupation Stereotype study was developed for intro students (as participants) and RIP I students (as researchers) at Macalester College. By being participants, intro students can see how psychological research is conducted through the use of the eye tracker, and they also get acquainted with basic cognitive processes seen in the field. RIP I students will familiarize themselves with eye tracking methodology and how to run participants in a psychological study by acting as researchers.
References:
Duffy, S., & Keir, J. (2004). Violating stereotypes: Eye movements and comprehension processes when text conflicts with world knowledge. Memory & Cognition, 32 (4), p. 551-559. Doi: 10.3758/BF03195846.
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