Computer Systems and the Information Found Online - Research Paper Example

? Psychological Science 210 Research Report Curtin Australia Computers have affected the way people live – the way people talk, the way they think. Almost all things that anyone can possibly think of can be found by just simply moving the fingers to get the information that one may need. Experts from Columbia and Harvard University proved that because of the dependency on the internet, and knowing the fact that the information can easily be obtained by just using a computer, people do not give much importance to how things can be remembered but the main focus is where to get that information. Replicating the experiment done by the experts from Columbia and Harvard University, 183 participants showed that what they claim seems to be valid. Keywords: computer dependence, Google effects, external memory Introduction The present generation lives in the age where people depend on technology in almost every activity to survive. Search engines such as Google have changed the way people store knowledge. Because of the popularity of the search engine, the word “to google” has been officially added to the dictionary to refer to the action of obtaining information using its website. The ease and convenience of searching for information using the Internet has made scientists believe that people are now using the Internet to store information, as a personal memory bank (Bohannon, 2011).This behaviour is considered unacceptable as it may decrease the intellectual ability of a person (Brabazon, 2006). A series of experiment was conducted, and they concluded that people always think of computers whenever they need to remember or get some information (Sparrow, Liu, & Wegner, 2011). In this paper, we will try to replicate one of the experiments, and the hypothesis is that the mean reaction time for computer words is longer compared to general words. Method Design. In this particular experiment, the independent variable will be the type of words (Computer words and General words) and the dependent variable will be the reaction time. The statistical method that will be used is the paired within-subject t-test to compare the participants’ reaction time for computer and general words. Participants. For this particular experiment, we randomly selected 183 participants, and we classified them according to their age, gender, course in the university, and handedness (if the person is left- or right-handed) (Tables 1-4). All our participants are at least 18 years of age and majority of them are females (Tables 1 and 2). Most of the participants are 18 years old, and the least are 22 years old. Most of the participants of this experiment are psychology majors while only two people are taking up master’s in speech pathology. Almost 90 percent of the participants are right-handed. Materials. The participants answered the questionnaires using the Oasis student portal. For the first part of the experiment, they were asked to answer a set of yes/no-type of questions. Then they took a Stroop task. In the Stroop task, the participants dealt with a total of 48 trials: 16 general words, 8 computer words. The words in the trial were randomly associated with colours blue and red, respectively, and were only done once. Computer software was used to record their reaction time. To analyse all recorded data statistically, the SPSS program was used. Procedure. The participants were tasked to answer a questionnaire as well as provide some basic information like their age, gender, course, and handedness (left-handed or right-handed). The first set of questions that they answered was a yes/no-type of test. For this part, the participants answered the questions as fast as possible to record their reaction times. For the Stroop task, the participants were tasked to identify the colour of the word (red or blue) on their screen as fast as possible. Results The mean reaction time for general words is 0.83 seconds with a standard deviation of 0.239 seconds while the mean reaction time for computer words is 0.81 seconds with a standard deviation of 0.239 seconds also. The mean difference between the reaction time for general words compared with the reaction time for computer words is 0.01 seconds with a standard deviation of 0.113. A paired samples t-test with a confidence interval value of (0.95) was used to compare the reaction times (in seconds) for general (M= 0.83, SD=0.239) and computer words (M=0.81, SD=0.239). Due to the means of the two reaction times (computer and general words) and the direction of the t-value, we can conclude that there is no statistically significant difference between the reaction times for computer and general words. We can also say that the differences between the means of the reaction times are likely due to chance and not likely due to the independent variable manipulation. The results show that at alpha=5%, since Sig. (2-tailed) value is equal to 0.296. This value is less than 0.05; therefore, we can conclude that there is a significant difference between the mean reaction time for computer words compared with the mean reaction time for general words after all 183 participants answered the set of hard questions. A one-sample t-test with a confidence interval value of (0.95) was used to evaluate the reaction time (in seconds) of participants when they were asked hard questions (M= 8.7278, SD=1.81807). Thus, 5.371 is the one sample t-test statistic while .000 is the p-value from this statistics, which is less than 0.05 (the level of significance which was employed in the test). Such p-value signifies that the mean reaction time of the sampled population is significantly different from 8 secs. The 95% confidence interval estimate for the difference between the population average time and 8 secs is (0.4604, 0.9952). Discussion So what could this possibly mean? As Sparrow et al. (2011) already examined, when people are faced with a situation where they need to get information right away, they opt for seeking the information in the web. When people know that they have accessibility to information using the World Wide Web, they have less tendency of remembering the details and use their ability to recall things instead for where to get the information. Processes of human memory are changing as the technology in information and communication develops. As this trend continues, more and more people will lose the habit of reading written information as people will tend to just skim, for they can find all they need on the Internet (Carr, 2008). Conclusion Depending on our computer systems and the information found online for remembering things is dependent on a few of the transactive memory processes on which public sharing of information is based. Recent studies about the "Google effect" tell us that people share details with ease because they instantly think of computer systems when they discover they need information and knowledge. If our goal is to excel in academics, especially in the field of science and technology, the effects of this issue would be a great obstacle because it could cause most of the people to use their minds less and become less effective. Although we may not observe the effects of this problem outright, eventually, in the future, the issue will become more severe and dangerous to all of us. Our dependency on search engines like Google has the prospective to really harm our intellectual ability, and since this is the direction our community is going in, we need to cope with the problems regarding this "Google effect" and find effective resolutions before people become lazier and less knowledgeable. Reference List Bohannon, J. (2011). Searching for the Google Effect on People's Memory. Science, 333, 277. doi: 10.1126/science.333.6040.277. Brabazon, T. (2006). The Google Effect: Googling, Blogging, Wikis and the Flattening of Expertise. Libri, 56, 157–167. Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic. 302, 56. Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333, 776-778. doi:10.1126/science.1207745. Appendix A Figure 1. Frequency of the distribution of reaction times (General words) Appendix B Figure 2. Frequency of distribution of the reaction times (Computer words) Table 1 Age (in years)of participants Frequency Per cent Valid Per cent Cumulative Per cent Valid 18 52 28.4 28.4 28.4 19 42 23.0 23.0 51.4 20 29 15.8 15.8 67.2 21 17 9.3 9.3 76.5 22 5 2.7 2.7 79.2 23+ 38 20.8 20.8 100.0 Total 183 100.0 100.0 Table 2 Gender of participants Frequency Per cent Valid Per cent Cumulative Per cent Valid Male 26 14.2 14.2 14.2 Female 157 85.8 85.8 100.0 Total 183 100.0 100.0 Table 3 Degree Course of participants Frequency Valid Bachelor of Psychology 118 Bachelor of Science (Psych) / Bachelor of Commerce (HRM & IR) Double Degree 20 Bachelor of Science (Speech Pathology) 43 Master of Speech Pathology 2 Total 183 Table 4 Handedness of participants Frequency Per cent Valid Per cent Cumulative Per cent Valid Left handed 19 10.4 10.4 10.4 Right handed 164 89.6 89.6 100.0 Total 183 100.0 100.0 Table 5 Paired Samples Correlations N Correlation Sig. Pair 1 RT_GENERAL & RT_PC 183 .889 .000 Table 6 Paired Samples Test (lower) Paired Differences Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Pair 1 RT_GENERAL - RT_PC .00874 .11272 .00833 -.00770 Table 7 Paired Samples Test (upper) Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Upper Pair 1 RT_GENERAL - RT_PC .02518 1.049 182 .296 Read More