Page 119 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

122 Daniel J. Levitin

or if Hans could not see his questioner. It was finally discovered that Hans had
become very adept at picking up subtle (and probably unintentional) move-
ments on the part of the questioner that cued him as to when he should stop
tapping his foot. Suppose a questioner asked Hans to add 7 and 3. Hans would
start tapping his hoof,and keep on tapping until the questioner stopped him
by saying ‘‘Right! Ten!’’ or,more subtly,by moving slightly when the correct
answer was reached.
You can see how important it is to ensure that extraneous cues or biases do
not intrude into an experimental situation.

6.4.2 Infants’ Perception of Musical Structure
In studies of infants’ perception of music,infants typically sit in their mother’s
lap while music phrases are played over a speaker. Infants tend to turn their
heads toward a novel or surprising event,and this is the dependent variable in
many infant studies; the point at which the infants turn their heads indicates
when they perceive a difference in whatever is being played. Suppose you ran
such a study and found that the infants were able to distinguish Mozart selec-
tions that were played normally from selections of equal length that began or
ended in the middle of a musical phrase. You might take this as evidence that
the infants have an innate understanding of musical phraseology.
Are there alternative explanations for the results? Suppose that in the exper-
imental design,the mothers could hear the music,too. The mothers might
unconsciously cue the infants to changes in the stimulus that they (the mothers)
detect. A simple solution is to have the mothers wear headphones playing
white noise,so that their perception of the music is masked.

6.4.3 Computers,Timing,and Other Pitfalls
It is very importantthatyou nottake anythingfor grantedasyou design a
careful experiment,and control extraneous variables. For example, psycholo-
gists studying visual perception frequently present their stimuli on a computer
using the MacIntosh or Windows operating system. In a computer program,
the code may specify that an image is to remain on the computer monitor for a
precise number of milliseconds. Just because you specify this does not make it
happen,however. Monitors have a refresh rate (60 or75Hzis typical),so the
‘‘on time’’ of an image will always be an integer multiple of the refresh cycle
(13.33 milliseconds for a 75 Hz refresh rate) no matter what you instruct
the computer to do in your code. To make things worse,the MacIntosh and
Windows operating systems do not guarantee ‘‘refresh cycle accuracy’’ in their
updating,so an instruction to put a new image on the screen may be delayed
an unknown amount of time.
It is important,therefore,always to verify, using some external means,that
the things you think are happening in your experiment are actually happening.
Just because you leave the volume control on your amplifier at the same spot
doesn’t mean the volume of a sound stimulus you are playing will be the same
from day to day. You should measure the output and not take the knob posi-
tion for granted. Just because a frequency generator is set for 1000 Hz does not
mean it is putting out a 1000 Hz signal. It is good science for you to measure
the output frequency yourself.