Perception

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of this experiment is to determine how humans perceive information while external distractions take place. This study can be applied to daily life in many ways. Living in the 21st century, humans are frequently texting and listening to music. The hypothesis is, if a subject is distracted by music or texting while reading, then they will recall less information than without distractions. Methods/Materials To conduct this experiment we presented to the subject three narratives. Three conditions were tested: texting, background music and without distractions. We tested subjects on their recollection of the content of the narratives. Results We found that recollection of subjects while texting was significantly inferior to the two other groups. We performed an Analysis of Variance test to compare all three groups. Our results were significant to the .0001 level. On the other hand, subjects tested with background music and without distractions tested similarly. The average score of background music was 8.84 and without distractions was 9.12. We performed a student t-test to determine whether there was a significant difference between background music and no distraction. We found no significant difference between them. Conclusions/Discussion Overall, our experiment shows that it is difficult to perceive information while texting, while listening to music does not negatively or positively affect narrative recall. These results will impact our daily lives and stimulate further experimentation on effects of distractions and multitasking.

Competition history

• CSEF 2015 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0708

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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