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Najiyah Afrin Khan (NAK1)
Department of History and PhilosophyNorth South University
Swapno Saha Ram
ID: 2212361030
Section: 16
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Reaction Time of Neutral and Emotional Words
Abstract
This study examines how long it takes for people to respond to various stimulus words.
According to the hypothesis, emotional words may elicit a slower response than neutral ones. A
North South University student was brought in for this experiment, and his permission was
obtained before it began. The participant received the appropriate instructions, which were to
reply with the first word that sprung to mind each time a word was read aloud. He is unable to
say the word's opposite when it is read aloud, though. A stopwatch would begin each time a
word was read out loud and stop when the participant responded. The experimenter would record
the word the participant said and the time it took for him to respond. This process was repeated
thirty times, each time with a different word. After collecting the data, it was used to figure out
the result by calculating the average response time for both emotional and neutral words. After
completing the calculations, it was analyzed that the results supported the hypothesis. Moreover,
this could be generalized in many ways like how an individual might also take a long time if the
words were written down. This experiment could be further researched by changing certain
variables like replacing the words with short phrases to check for a different response. However
this experiment does have some limitations such as the sample size being too small to generalize.
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Introduction
Each person has a different way of understanding words. For example, if someone mentions a wo
rd like "mango" in a group of friends, some may think it is just a fruit and not much to talk about,
while others may become excited and want to talk endlessly about it because they love it so muc
h. One person may become depressed because it reminds him of the times he and his deceased fa
ther used to bond over mangoes at the dinner table. As a result, one person's reaction to a word m
ay typically differ from another's, though it is up for debate what kinds of words people react to
it.
A study was conducted which showed that individuals responded quickly to words that are
emotional such as “love” rather than words which are neutral like “pen”. This is because these
emotional words may open up a strong memory that the individual co-relate with hence taking
less time to respond (Sereno et al., 2009). However, other studies say otherwise where they
explain that emotional words might open up a long range of word association compared to the
neutral words hence it might take longer for an individual to respond to it (Ayşe & Catherine,
2004). To come to our own conclusion as to which word takes the longest time to respond, an
experiment was conducted. The hypothesis for this study experiment was that emotional words
might take a longer time to respond compared to neutral words.
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Methodology
Participant:
The participant is a 24 year old man. He was born in Dinajpur, Bangladesh. He has completed
his HSC from Saidpur Canttornment in Saidpur. In addition he is currently a student of North
South University, majoring in Supply Chain.
Materials:
For this experiment, the following materials were utilized. To begin with, a phone was used by
accessing its built in stopwatch feature to record the time it took for the participant to reply back
when a word was read aloud to him. Secondly, a pen was used to write down the words the
participant responded when the word was read aloud each time. Thirdly, three documents were
used to conduct this experiment. The first document was the word list which contained 30
stimulus words consisting of 15 emotional words and 15 neutral words. Also, a space was
present to write down the response word and the reaction time beside each stimulus word in this
document.
The second document was the instruction sheet which contained the guidelines on what the task
of the participant will be for the experiment. The last document is the participant informed
consent form which serves the purpose of confirming that the participant voluntarily agreed to
take part in this experiment by getting his signature. There is also space for the experimenter to
provide his signature to confirm that he has also consented to partake in the experiment.
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Procedure:
To begin with, the participant was brought into the classroom and was sat on a chair. The
experimenter also sat down, facing towards the participant. The experimenter thanked him for
coming and explained to him about the goal of the experiment which was to understand the
human’s reaction to various types of words. He also informed the participant that the experiment
will not put him at risk. Also, the data obtained from the experiment will be used for academic
purposes only and his participation is fully voluntary. Afterwards, a participant’s informed
consent form was handed to the participant to read and see whether he consents to the
experiment. If he has any questions, he may ask as well. After the participant consented he can
sign the form and then the experimenter would sign as well to confirm that both parties have
agreed.
Next step, the experimenter would proceed to talk about the instructions of the experiment to the
participant. The experimenter will have a word list which contains all 30 stimulus words. He will
make sure that the participant does not see the words on the list while conducting the experiment.
After getting the list out, the experimenter will read aloud a word from the top of the list and start
the stopwatch. The participant’s job is to quickly reply back to the word by saying aloud the first
word that comes to his mind. He will be informed as well that he cannot say the opposite of the
word that was read aloud. Once the participant responds back with a word then the stopwatch
will be stopped and the experimenter will record the word that the participant responded with
and the time it took for him to say it. Then the experimenter will move to the next word and
repeat the process until the 30th stimulus word.
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The instruction form would be given after explaining the instruction for the participant to read
and if he has any questions about the experiment then he can ask but if not then he can hand back
the form and the experiment will proceed as explained above. Once the experiment was finished
then the experimenter thanked the participant for his time and contribution and that if he was
curious about the result then after analysis, the experimenter will show him the report. After
everything was completed the experimenter bid farewell to the participant and informed him that
he can take his leave.
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Results
Emotional words Neutral words
1.29 1.08
0.74 1.89
skip 0.02
0.04 0.02
3.04 0.49
1.04 skip
1.22 1.22
2.29 0.29
2.49 0.49
2.69 0.58
4.29 skip
0.29 1.22
5.29 0.22
3.22 0.12
2.00 0.21
29.93 (Total) 7.85 (Total)
2.13 (Average) 0.61 (Average)
Table. 01: Numerical values of the Emotional and Neutral words in a table
Hypothesis:
The results suggest that emotional words might take a longer time to respond compared to
neutral words.
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Firstly, two columns have been made and labeled as emotional words and neutral words
respectively. Then the 30 stimulus words were sorted between the two categories using the labels
beside each of the words and only the time was recorded in the columns. So there were 15
distinct times in the emotional words column and 15 in the neutral column. Then all of the time
from each column was summed up together where emotional words had. 29.93 seconds and
neutral words had 7.85 seconds. Afterward, each sum value was divided by 15 as there were
words for each column to figure the average time it took for the participant to respond after
hearing a stimulus word. For emotional words, it was 2.13 seconds; for neutral words, it was
0.61 seconds. This shows that the hypothesis of emotional words taking a longer time to respond
compared to neutral words is supported by the analysis done above. For visualization, a bar chart
was made to showcase the results done above as well.
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Discussion
Some observations were made when conducting the experiment. Firstly, reading aloud the
majority
of the neutral word, the participant had a neutral expression. However, there was a neutral word
that took the most time to respond back and it was because after hearing the word, the participant
was giggling hence after bringing back his composure he was able to reply back that specific
neutral word was Cupboard. This kind of reaction might have happened because to him the
cupboard had a connection with a funny incident in his life. Furthermore, when reading aloud
some of the emotional words, the participant responded and followed up with a sigh and a sad
expression. This happened with three emotional words which are love, hug and darling. This
kind of reaction might have happened because to him these three specific emotional words had a
connection to a sad incident in his life.
Furthermore, there are many ways this experiment can be generalized. For instance, this
experiment was done by reading aloud a word and the participant responding back verbally.
Then an assumption could be made that an individual might have a similar reaction if the words
were written down. Like if an individual were to see an emotional word then it might take him a
longer time to respond compared to seeing a neutral word judging by the result from the data
collected. Another instance is where the experiment was conducted on a 24 year old man so
another assumption could be made that other age groups could have had a similar response to the
participant.
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There are also many ways this experiment could be expanded for further research. For instance,
instead of using single words, the experiment could be conducted using short phrases or
sentences that are emotional and neutral. Then an analysis could be done on whether the results
are the same or whether the response rate has exponentially changed or not. Another instance is
where the experiment will be conducted on the participant with a different emotional state. Like
if the experimenter attempts to make the participant sad by showing a sad video of a student
moving away from his parents for further study, then after showing the video the experiment was
conducted by reading out the stimulus word. So afterwards the experimenter would check
whether having a different emotional state affects the results of the experiment.
Lastly, the limitations of this experiment needs to be addressed as well. One of them being the
setting like the classroom where this particular experiment took place was cold for the
participant. Hence, the cold sensation might have hindered his response time which could make
the result less reliable. Another limitation could have been demand characteristics where the
participant might have made an assumption on which word would take longer to respond. Hence,
he might have changed his response rate accordingly which could lead to the result being even
less reliable. Another limitation is the sample size where only one participant was used to
conduct the experiment so it is very difficult to generalize the experiment as one individual does
not represent a population.
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References
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-19292-006
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1InF43Jkg5m8mBN5J2lnvGAmqALmvNG00Fq
PS_mdMTg0/edit?usp=sharing
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18440691/
Appendix
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