Monday, March 7, 2011

"Sheep Dash" Testing Method

I have come up with a method for my experiment.

Experimental Subjects:

-20 people in total.
(10 boys)
(10 girls)

Equipment:

-Computer
-Chair
-Online site
-http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf 
("Sheep Dash" test)

Variables:

-Each person was seated
-They all used their pointer finger on their dominant hand
-They all did the test on the same site
-They all held their finger approximately 3cm above the mouse click button

Method:

1. Get the person to sit down at their computer
2. Make sure their finger is about 3cm above the mouse button
3. Get them to complete the test
4. Record number of seconds it took them to react to the sheep
5. Repeat this for each person 3 times, to get an average
6. Work out each persons average time

Friday, March 4, 2011

Sheep Dash Experiment

I am changing my experiment slightly, as I said before, so I am only using the sheep test.
I am still going to keep the main parts of my experiment the same, so I tested 10 boys, and 10 girls, but I am only going to use the results I got from the physical Sheep Dash test, and analyse them.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Changing Experimental Method.

I have encountered complications with my experiment, because I realised that I can't correctly test people based on mental reaction questions, because to do that, there are lots of other components and it is quite different than physical reaction time. This is because there are many factors that contribute to the answering of a question such as decisiveness, impulsivity and emotional responses.

I am now only going to be testing the physical reaction time, because it is a much more accurate and clear experiment as it is only testing the visual response to physical reaction throught muscular contraction of the finger.

To do this, I am going to use the "Sheep Dash" test. This is is an online reaction time test where when you see a sheep start to run across the screen, you tap your index finger on the mouse. This stops the sheep where you pressed it, and records the amount time taken from when you see the sheep move, to when you reacted and tapped your finger. In each game, there is a total of 5 sheep that run across the screen. Each game calculates the average reaction time over the 5 sheep. I have decided to get the subjects to play three games, and then I will take an average of those scores. Which in fact, is an average of 15 separate reaction times.

This experiment is more refined and has less margin of error than the ruler test, because there are many more muscles involved in catching the ruler, and more variables in measururing and recording.