The set of cognitive experiments were written primarily as demonstrations of classical experiments in psychology.  However, students have used them extensively to create their own experiments.  The only disadvantage is that you must write down your data after each subject and then enter into Quattro Pro or Systat for analysis.

You might take a look at the experiments in the Cognitive program and write something similar in Superlab and have full control over your variables.

Each experiment in the Cognitive program has a brief introduction and several references to articles.  That is a good place to start.
 

1. Stroop Effect
2. Lexical Decision Making
3. Recall

 
 
Possible variations include:
 
1. Changing the word list in the Recall experiment to contrast different types of words.
2. Giving different instructions to subjects to test for learning set.
3. Changing the level of stress by varying the amount of time given for a task.

• Contrasted the performance on the paper version of the Stroop and the computer version.
• Compared the performance of males and females on the Stroop task.
• Compared the recall of high frequency words to low frequency words.
• Correlated lexical decision making performance with major in school.

At present, the Cognitive Experiments are located on the computer in my office.  To use the program, when you start the computer choose Psychology on the first menu by hitting the up arrow once.  You will be presented with a second menu.  Use the arrow keys to choose Cognitive Experiments.

As always, we will be happy to help you the first few times until you are comfortable using the program.

© Marilyn Shea, November 1999
Department of Psychology, University of Maine at Farmington