ROUGH REPORT
Submitted by
Saish kamble
Roll no. 19293
A.Y. 2021-22
AUTOMATIC VIGILANCE
INTRODUCTION
Automatic vigilance occurs when a negatively vigil target stimulus is characterised faster and
more accurately when it is preceded by a threating prime stimulus.
A new study published in the journal of experimental psychology: general reveals that the
vigilance is automatic when it is negatively valenced stimulus is preceded by a threating
prime stimulus rather than neutral one. The findings says that the brain automatically
registers that threat information and is quicker to response to negatively valenced stimulus
The work of Stroop’s is evident 50 years earlier in the work of James Mckeen Cattell in 1886
One example of automatic attention is the Stroop paradigm. In psychology the Stroop effect
is the short delay in the reaction time between congruent and incongruent stimuli the Stroop
Effect was the result of combined efforts of Jaensch(1929) and Stroop(1935). The
participants were shown the words ‘red’, ‘yellow’, ‘blue’, ‘green’, printed in the colour ink
but in incongruent combination of colour words unit and were asked to name the colours of
the ink in which the words were written. Naming the colour in incongruent colour word units
was harder than naming in simple strips uncompleted by words. The present study was
conducted to determine whether the Stroop effect in the colour-naming task is sensitive to the
valence of the trait adjective. Specifically, the study was designed to replicate the finding,
first reported by Wentura and Rothurmund (2000), that the Stroop effect is reliably larger
when the trait adjective is negative rather than positive. Method: Participants were asked to
name the colour of the ink in which words like "kind" and "cruel" were written. The goal was
to measure the time it took for participants to name the colour of the ink in which the word
was printed. Three different types of word pairs were used: the first pair consisted of words
that were congruent with each other (e.g., kind/kind, cruel/cruel); the second pair consisted of
words that were incongruent with each other (e.g., kind/cruel, cruel/kind). The Stroop Effect
(also known as the Stroop Task) is a demonstration of interference in the form of response
competition. In the classic version of the Stroop effect, subjects are asked to name the colour
of a word (e.g. ‘red’) while simultaneously reading the word. The time taken to name the
colour of the word is longer than if subjects are only asked to name the colour of the ink in
which it is written. This is because, in the second case, subjects can ignore the word and
concentrate on the ink. However, if the word and the ink are in the same colour, subjects have
to name both, which is more difficult.
In this study, they tested the hypothesis that trait adjectives that are negative in valence are
processed more quickly than positive trait adjectives. To test this hypothesis, participants
were presented with trait adjectives, and their colour responses were recorded. They found
that participants responded faster to positive trait adjectives, and they responded more slowly
to negative trait adjectives. They concluded that trait adjectives that are negative in valence
are processed more quickly because cognitive effort is required to keep their undesirable
content out of conscious awareness. The Effects Of Positive And Negative Affect On Event-
Related Potentials During Emotional The Researcher Gave A Surprise Recall Test And
Participants Were Able To Recall Negative Words Significantly Better Than Positive Words.
This Supports The Perceptual Automatic Vigilance HypothesisTo understand how people
judge the veracity of information, it is important to consider the context in which people are
presented with information. In particular, people's expectations about what will happen in the
world are generally positive. For example, people expect others to behave in socially
desirable ways or at least in socially appropriate ways. In contrast, people expect themselves
to behave in socially undesirable ways or at least in socially inappropriate ways. As a result,
people tend to judge negative information about other people as more diagnostic than positive
information about other people.Berridge, C. (1998).
The Pollyanna principle (Matlin & Stang, 1978) suggests that people expect positive
outcomes even when faced with information to the contrary. In other words, desirable events
tend to be viewed as common, frequently occurring, and typical, whereas undesirable events
tend to be seen as uncommon, infrequent, and atypical. The informational value of
undesirable traits should be higher than that of desirable traits, as uncommon and atypical
events are seen as more informative (see Fiske, 1980) and diagnostic (Skowronski &
Carlston, 1989) In comparison, positively valenced activities, such as feeding and
procreation, are less pressing; although they are of crucial importance in the long term,
pleasure is simply less urgent than pain. Negative affect carries an important signal value
because it signifies to the organism the need to change or adjust its current state or activity.
Given the adaptive significance of fast responses to undesirable stimuli (e.g., Fiske, 1980), an
adaptive advantage would accrue for organisms that have the capacity to attend to them
quickly and with little effort. In humans, quick and effortless cognitive processes have been
termed automatic; that is, they can occur without the perceiver's intention or control (for a
review, see Shiffrin, 1988).
The Stroop task is a classic paradigm in the study of selective attention. In it, participants are
asked to name the colour of neutral ink colour words while ignoring the meaning of the word.
The task is commonly used to demonstrate the automatic capture of attention by emotionally
salient words. The Stroop task has been used to demonstrate attentional capture by negative
words, and this effect has been found to be more pronounced for words that are relevant to
self compared with words that are relevant to others. The current study examined the role of
relevance in the automatic capture of attention by negative words in the Stroop task. We
hypothesized that the detection of negative words would be more likely to occur for words
that are relevant to self than to others. Thus, automatic vigilance to other-relevant stimuli
seems to be a goalindependent, preconscious type of automaticity (Bargh, 1994). There is an
attentional capture impact seen in words that are negative and other relevant
In this experiment the prediction was that the undesirable word trait would take longer time
to name Thus, in the present experiment, it was expected that undesirable trait words would
cause problems disengaging attention from the words and focusing on the colour dimension.
Therefore, participant would take longer to name the colours of the undesirable trait words as
compared to the desirable trait words.
INDIVIDUAL DATA
The experiment was conducted to study whether colour-naming time was longer for
undesirable trait words as compared to desirable trait words and whether undesirable trait
words were remembered better than desirable trait words. The participant was shown the two
cards and the difference between them was explained. The experiment was perform on one
participant. The participant was shown the list of undesirable word traits and desirable word
traits in which the participant has to name only colours in which words are written. The
participant was given two sheets, one of desirable word traits and other was undesirable trait
words. The participant was given a recall task to perform in which the participant has to
recall all the words he remembered after visualizing both the sheets that were presented
earlier during the experiment. The participant task was to recall the words he/she remember
after viewing the sheets. The participant was told that the task of naming the colour shows
that people are sensitive to the emotion entailed in the stimulus word though this feature is
completely irrelevant to the task. One way that people evaluate stimuli is to immediately find
out whether a stimulus ‘good for me’ or ‘bad for me’ without much conscious thought. Then
our attention gets directed to the stimulus that is evaluated as negative or undesirable. This
shift in attention occurs even without the intention of the person. Negative words divert
attention away from the colour name due to a mechanism called ‘automatic vigilance’
In the reference table 1 shows that the comparison of Colour naming time in seconds and No.
of words recalled for Undesirable and Desirable Trait Words.
The participant was given first the undesirable sheet of word trait in which participant took
the time of 1.28 minutes in total 72 seconds. After that participant was presented desirable
word sheet in which the participant took the time of 1.28 minutes in total 66.6 seconds.
In the recall task participant was given blank sheet of paper and asked to recall the words
participant remember. The time given to participant was 3 minutes in which participant
could only recall two words ‘lonely’ and ‘cruel’.
This proves that hypothesis is in line as it states that undesirable trait words produce more
interference with colour naming than the desirable trait words. Total time taken to name the
colours of undesirable trait words are more than that of desirable trait words and the
undesirable trait words are recalled more than the desirable trait words.
The participant seemed to be calm curious and drowsy as the experiment took place early in
morning. The participant attend the experiment just after waking up from sleep. The
participant was squinting his eyes to focus more on colour and started tapping his legs, as he
was warned during experiment.
The participant was bit scared after experimenter gave the recall instructions. The participant
stated that he was embarrassed that he was just messing around and enjoying naming those
colours in which the words were written. The participant was engrossed in naming the right
colour rather than thinking about the words.
As it can be seen from above scores, undesirable word trait took longer time to name the
colours and it was recalled better in comparison to desirable words. The result are in trend
with the alternative hypothesis that was not constant with the null hypothesis.
GROUP DATA DISCUSSION
Data of 20 students who conducted this experiment was taken to analyse, the total number of
participants were 20 as it was one participant experiment.
The mean of desirable colour words is lower than the undesirable colour word. The mean of
undesirable trait is 73.25 and the mean of desirable trait word is 72.45
A t-test technique was used to analyse group data as there is Repeated group design as the
same participant was conducting for same condition and more then two levels which are
undesirable traits and desirable traits. Some participants were shown undesirable word sheet
first and desirable sheet second and some participants were shown desirable sheet first and
then undesirable sheet.
The calculation of t value (19) was setup to be -0.086 for one tail random group design the
value. The value of -0.086 is lesser then the critical value of 1.7291 at 0.5 p-level. Which
means that the result are not in trend or insignificant. This results are in line with the null
hypothesis hence it rejects the alternative hypothesis. These are the results of colour naming
time taken by participants.
This are the results of recall scores in which the calculations of t value (19) was found to be
one tailed repeated group design. The value of t-stat is lesser than the critical value of
1.7291at p-level of 0.05 which means that the results are insignificant. This results are in line
with null hypothesis. Therefore it rejects the alternative hypothesis. the results may have
affected due to a few factor the participant might be nervous while performing the experiment
or lack of professionalism.
Recent research
Post task questions
1. Have you heard anything about this experiment before?
2. Do you have any comments about this experiment?
3. What do you think was the purpose of this experiment?
4. Did you find anything unusual about this experiment?
5. Did you feel anxious at any point during the experiment? If so, explain.
6. Did you notice any difference in the words or how you named the colours on the 2 cards?
If yes, please explain.
7. Did nature of the words make any difference to how fast you named their colours and how
well you remembered them? If yes, please explain how?
8. Did you find the words on any one card more distracting than the other?Did that make it
easier or more difficult to name the colours on any one card? If yes, please explain how that
affected your experience.
9. Did you anticipate that there would be another task following the colour-naming task? If
yes, how and what did you anticipate?
10. Did you experience any difficulty in recalling the words? If yes, specify.
11. Did you feel that some words were easier to remember or stood out among the rest? If so,
which were they and why do you think you remembered them better
Answers
1) No I haven't heard
2) It was an interesting experience
3)
4) After a long session I was told to write down the words I remember
5) No I was totally calm , just curious to know what will happen next
6) No I couldn't notice. Everything was just a surprise
7) it was quite difficult to name the colours while viewing those words. It took time to name
them and only 2 words were restored after few minutes.
8) All were same . Although it was quite funny and challenging too
9) That was a shock for me when the performer asked me to write down the words. I was so
embarrassed that I was just messing around and enjoying reading those words cuz it was
challenging rather than focusing and remembering them.
10) A lot. I was only focusing on naming the colours accurately. Hardly I could recall 2
words.
11) All were quite same for me. I was engrossed in naming the right colours rather than
thinking about the words.
