Smart Colors final lab report

Hypothesis:
A test that is on different colors of paper when given to different samples will
influence a personís brain activity. By using bright colors of paper on a different series
of tests the outcome of the test scores are going to be much higher then the scores that are
produced from dull paper. We are going to use the scores that are produced from the
white paper as our mean scores.

Introduction:
We are going to produce a student generated lab on the affects of color on the
amount of stimulated brain activity that is produced. We are going to do this by giving a
variety of tests to selected groups of students. We are testing the influences on memory,
observation, recall and attention. Our samples are students that live in Peabody, Mary
Lyon, McKee Halls, along with the students in our Wcp131 Natural Systems class. We
are going to put a variety of tests on pieces of paper that are yellow, white and gray.
Through this, we are going to test the cognitive influences of these colors with humans.
We will use white as our control that will hopefully produce the average scores that
would be varied from the bright and dull colored papers. The individuals cornered into
assisting us in our lab will be taking numerous small individual tests done through the
dorms. When researching some background information on the web,
(www.java.net/color.com/optics.html) we see that the color yellow temporarily jolts you
and wakes your brain. This website also informed us that yellow has a higher affective
value for men than it does for women.

Materials and Methods:
Our materials are different papers in the colors of white, gray and yellow. The
way we are going to test this is by a number of surveys among our fellow students.

MEMORY
The test we found for this aspect of our experient consisted of a table with a grid of
fifteen pictures. The people were asked to view these for exactly one minute. In the next
minute the students were given a blank grid where they had to write down each image
based only upon what they remember. Each test will be given randomly on different
colors of paper. (grey, white, yellow) According to how many each student remembered
correctly and what color paper they randomly recieved they were given scores.

OBSERVATION
Splitting our group up again and assigning them to different dorms, we will perform the
second test. The second test is to write a short paragraph consisting of a four to five
sentences of text with words beginning in ìfî and then words ending in ìfî and then
words with the letter ìfî in the middle of them. We will then give the student fifteen
seconds to look at the paragraph on a random color of paper and count the number of
ìfîs in the paragraph. The student will write down how many ìfîs he or she observes in
the paragraph. Based on how close he or she is to the actual number of ìfís on the paper,
we will determine which color paper produced the best results. This test will be given to
each person on a random color of paper and then the results will be recorded on our data
sheet. This survey will test cognitive observation of the number of ìfîs by the colors of
the paper. Our data will be recorded on our ìObservation Tableî
Along with this test, we are using a published test that we also found at the library
that has to deal with completing a pattern. The person being surveyed will have to choose
which object best completes the pattern displayed on the page. The answers will be
evaluated according to the correct answers the test booklet gave us. Both tests were
passed out randomly on different colors of paper to different people.

RECALL
We derived a paragraph that contained a few words that were written twice. The students
were required to read them outloud. The words that they recognized as doubled and read
those correctly were taken into account. Based on how many words they recognized, and
what color paper they read from they were recieved scores. The second recall test was a
paragraph filled with sentences that were double negatives. The object of this was to see
if the students were able to decipher the paragraph despite all the confusing double
negatives. The test was passed out again randomly on different colors of paper to the
testees.

ATTENTION
The last test that we plan to do is to give little quizzes to our fellow students. Once
again, we will spit up our group and assign each member a different dorm to survey. The
test we plan to do will consist of an image of a person. The testee was given ten seconds
to view the image and then move to the next page where the image was one of several
others. They had to find that image in ten seconds on the second page. The other test is
similar to the faces except the images are patterns and the student must decipher which
were the orinally viewed patterns among the new ones, in the samw way the faces test
was done. Each test will be passed out randomly on the three different colors of paper.
CONCLUSION
The tests that we found concurrent to our hypthesis and whose p-value were less than .05
were the memory test with the grids, and the attention test with the patterns and finding
the previously viewed patterns in among others. The rest were proven only by chance.
However, all in all, the yellow did seem to come out as the higher result. Unfortunately,
we must reject our hypothesis, though, because P-values did not always agree. So
scientifically speaking, our experiment showed that the color of the paper does not truly
affect the cognitive results of the tests. The following charts and graphs are arranged
with the test that they go with and a summary of our interpretations

Color-Memory

The color-memory test is found in column number 6 and 7. The people were
given this test on three different colors of paper. They were given one minute to
memorize a grid of 15 pictures and one minute to write them down. The P-value of the
data found to be .0133. This rejects the Null hypothesis because there is a greater than
.05. There is no significant difference and the test is more likely to be chance. The
graph for the color memory test shows that people who took the test on yellow paper got
more answers right. Thus, this proves our hypothesis that bright colors stimulate the
brain. In this graph there is one discrepancy though. The people who took the test on
gray paper scored slightly higher than the people who took the test on white paper. Thus
we were also disproved by thinking that white would do better than gray.

Attention: Color-Face test

The attention test used the different colors of paper on a series of tests. It tests
the personís ability to recall an image. The data is shown on column number 9 and 10 on
the chart. Column 9 refers to the color of paper the test was printed on and column 10
shows the number of faces remembered. We tested 48 people, 16 on each of the three
colors. We tried to see the affect the colors had on each person. There were four
different parts to the test. Each section is harder than the previous. The people tested
were asked to recall the faces viewed on the page before.
We tested our hypothesis by finding the P-value, the mean, and a bar graph from
the data results. We found the P-value to be .2932. This is far off from the accepted
value of .05. This shows that there is a significant difference in data. The results are
insignificant and are fore affected by chance than anything else. The means of the results
are also very close. The mean rank of yellow was 27.9, the white was 20.5, and the gray
was 25.3. This just means that the people tested got similar number of answers correct.
They were able to recall images almost in similar amounts. The graph just illustrates this
image more clearly.

Attention: Color-Box Test

The color-box test is found in columns number 11 and 12. Column 11 shows the
color of paper the test was printed on, and column number 12 shows the number of
images remembered. The second attention test is similar to the first. It too tests a
persons ability to recall an image. It is tested on the three different colors of papers.
However it uses patterns instead of photographs. But this test shows different results
than the face test. We tested the p-value, the mean, and used a bar graph to compare
data. The P-value came out to be .0144 which is closer to the accepted P-value .05. This
means that the results were close, and are not relying on chance alone. The means of the
results were significantly different. Those who tested on yellow paper had a mean of
32.8, those on white tested 19.9, and those on gray had 20.7. The bar graph showed to be
the highest in the yellow bar.

Color- Pattern Test

The second set of data that is placed on the table came from our observation test
that had many patterns. The people had to pick out the right piece that would fit the
pattern. The column that is labeled color-pattern shows the color of paper that each
person took the next test on. The column which is pattern accuracy interprets the data
into a right or wrong answer. The first table show the P-value of the data. The P-value
of this test is .2096. This does not reject the null hypothesis. This means that there is a
.2096 chance that the results are based on chance alone.
The next table adds up all the wrong and right answers that there were. The first
row has all of the right answers added up for the yellow paper and also all of the wrong.
The next rows are the same except they are the white and gray tests. This is why the
table is called the observed frequencies, because they are the scores that came from the
data. The next table is of the expected values. These are the average number of the total
of the right and wrong answers. This table helps interpret the other table. The yellow
right observed number is 3 where the expected number right should be 1.667. This
shows that the test taken on the yellow tests produced better scores. The white didnít
show much difference, and the gray didnít produce any right scores at all. This test
showed that it was mainly based on chance alone.

Color-Accuracy

The first set of data that appears in our table, are the results of one of the
observation tests we administered. This was a test which we had written a couple of
sentences and placed many words with the letter ìf ì in the sentences. The first column
consists of the number of people we had take the tests. We had 48 people take the tests.
The number of people was a constant throughout our lab. The second column is the
color of paper administered taking each particular test. The third column, # Accuracy,
tells the viewer whether or not the person got all of the ìfísî. If they were right their
answer was 13.
To help prove our hypothesis, we constructed three tables for this test. The first
table shows the p-value of .0742, which is very close to .05. This means that our data
came very close to not relying on chance alone. The next table shows how many right or
wrong answers there were along side the color of paper. The people that took the test on
the yellow paper scored higher than the people on the gray test, but the people who took
the gray test scored higher than the people that took the test on the white paper.

Double Negative

In the double negative recall test, represented by the D-Negative Color /
D-Negative Corr... column in our results. We asked people to read a paragraph full of
double negatives and interpret what it meant in writing. We were not able to reject the
Null Hypothesis because the p-value was .0597. However, our results do show that the
people who took the test on yellow paper scored higher than the people who took the test
on white paper. The people who took the test on white paper scored higher than the
people who took the test on gray paper, proving that our hypothesis is correct but may be
somewhat due to chance because of our people.

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