Effect of Priming upon Perception of Ambiguous Figure

Effect of Priming upon Perception of Ambiguous Figure

Abstract

The main aim of the study is to determine how different people perceive obscure statistics. The results showed that the mean in the prime group was slightly higher.

Introduction

Priming is the / memory effect occurring when a person is exposed to a stimulus that can influence the response of the later stimulus. Priming is, therefore, a psychological technique that is often used to train different individual’s memory in both positive and negative / direction (Brascamp, Pels & Kristjánsson, 2011).  Research shows that different images that can cause different interpretation have created psychological curiosity for an extended period of time and many other research articles and researchers explain there are different cognitive processes and memory process that help/explain how one image can be arranged and interpreted in more than one way (Davey, 2019). There are different procedures and various methods that can be used to determine the effects of priming and how they affect memory (Myers & DeWall, 2018). This research was conducted to identify the impact of priming upon a perception of ambiguous figures. The main aim of the study is to determine how different people perceive ambiguous images. A research by (Palmer,1975) shows that an ambiguous image is an image in which there is a possibility of an individual to see two or more images. Other than finding the effect of priming on obscure statistics, this research will help to generate data that would be used by all the level 4 psychology students analyze as part of their second assessment on the module Quantitative Research Methods in Psychology.

The Research Question

1. Does age contribute towards the effect of priming upon a perception of ambiguous figures?
2. Does sex contribute towards the effect of priming upon a perception of ambiguous figures?

The hypothesis of the study

The study formulated two assumptions that were used to guide the research process

H₁: Age affects the perception of ambiguous figures upon priming

H₂: Sex affects the perception of obscure figures upon priming (For both hypotheses, do you already have a suggestion of HOW these two factors will influence?)

From the study conducted, the independent variable was the conditions that are either prime or control, and the dependent of the study are age and sex. The research will determine whether age and sex affect the condition generally, whether sex and age affect the perception of ambiguous figures.

Method

This section of the study will discuss the research methods that were used to collect data for the study purpose. The section will primarily discuss the research design, participant of the study, sampling procedure used to collect data for the study. The section will also discuss the material used for data collection and the procedure that was used in the data collection process.

Research Design

The study used a quantitative research design as most of the data collected was based on numeric values. An experimental design with priming and control. The first experiment involved priming where participants in this group were given an image before the ambiguous image that was perceptually similar to one of the two images in the ambiguous figure. The second experiment was a control experiment where participants in this group were given an image before the ambiguous image that was not perceptually similar to either of the two images in the ambiguous figure. The independent variable of the study is the ambiguous image condition, while the dependent variables which explain the independent variable are the age and sex. During the experiment, the participants were asked their age and gender and given a short explanation, including examples of the ambiguous figures. The participants then saw prime control images depending on the condition they were in for 5.5 seconds. The participants were then shown the ambiguous image and directed to indicate what they had seen first in that image. 

Participants

The study selected 489 participants to take part in the study, and the participants were selected randomly to participate in data collection. The target population for the study was people of all ages, with the main focus on the students. The age and sex of the participants were recorded for the research purpose. The participants were grouped based on the descriptive statistic of age and gender. Age ranged from as low as 17 years to as high as 60 years. Gender was grouped into three categories, which are either male, female, or any other such as the non-binary. This was to ensure that all population that was targeted by the study was represented in the research to avoid biases. Out of 489 selected for the study, only 62 did not complete the entire study.

Materials

The study used a self-administered experiment where the participants were required to open the link provided and complete the experiment. After showing the participants they were shown the prime or control image depending on the condition, they were shown the ambiguous image and asked to indicate what they had seen first in that image. The image below shows the type of response that the participants were expected to give after the experiment. The participants were shown the images for 5.5 seconds.

Procedure

The participants were required to tick the consent box if they agreed to participate in the experiment.  All the information of the participants was kept secure, and their names were not recorded for the study purpose. This was to ensure that all the information was secure, and the rights of the participants were not violated.

Results  

This study was looking into the effects on priming on perception, after placing the data into SPSS, these were the descriptive statistics.

The descriptive statistics was conducted to identify the relationship between the groups. From the obtained descriptive statistics, we are able to compare the means and the standard deviation of the groups under study. The result    indicate that the primer condition scored a higher mean of 4.977 compared to the control condition which scored a lower mean of 4.523 an indication that the prime condition scored higher in average   compared to the control condition. From the mean presented, the study can conclude that the prime condition scored highly in average scores compared to the control condition that scored slightly lower in terms of average scores. The other descriptive statistics that was conducted by the study is the standard deviation to help understand the consistency in the scores.  From the result obtained, it is evident that   the two conditions had a standard deviation that is more than 1 an indication that there was a large difference in scores for both the prime condition and the control condition. It is important to note that a lower standard deviation of let say zero is better since the score shows much consistency and when the standards deviation indicates a large value of more than 1, it is an indication that the scores were not consistent hence the research concluded   both the condition   had inconsistent scores. While making comparison between the groups, the control condition scored recorded a lower standard   deviation of 1.194 compared to the prime condition that recorded a standard deviation of 1.299 an indication that the control condition had a consistent scores compared to the prime condition.

The difference was the prime group scored a higher mean than control group because they were able to perceive ambiguous images in a more correct manner. This shows that even though the prime group were shown different images, they were able to perceive the ambiguous images correctly as compared to the   control group. The G graph produced clearly shows that the prime condition   scored    a higher mean score   compared to the control condition and   the research interpreted that   based on the graphical result obtained, the prime group were more accurate in   interpreting the results correctly as compared to the control group.  It is therefore evident that when an individual in the prime group is given an image before the ambiguous figure that is perceptually   similar to the ambiguous image, they are likely to make a correct interpretation. On the other hand, when the participants in the control group were given the image before the ambiguous figure that was not perceptually similar to either of the two images in the ambiguous figure, they were likely to make an incorrect interpretation of the image.

G-Graph

The independent sample T test was also conducted to compare the means between the two groups.   The two sample t test was conducted to give a further explanation   on the means and standard deviation and still produced a consistent result to that of descriptive statistics with the prime condition showing higher average and lower consistent results and the control condition showing lower average but a consistent score.

 Discussion

References

Davey, G. (Ed.) (2019). Psychology. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2018). Psychology (12th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Palmer, S. E. (1975). The effects of contextual scenes on the identification of objects. Memory and Cognition, 3, 519-526.

Brascamp, J. W., Pels, E., & Kristjánsson, Á. (2011). Priming of pop-out on multiple time scales during visual search. Vision Research, 51(17), 1972-1978.