The Title of This Exercise Is the Rat-Man Experiment
By: copas_ralph • Research Paper • 3,537 Words • April 30, 2011 • 3,040 Views
The Title of This Exercise Is the Rat-Man Experiment
Phillip Tyson 12C
Rat-Man Experiment
ERA 1 – Unit 3
Title: The title of this exercise is the Rat-Man experiment.
Abstract: The aim of this experiment is to test visual perception and sensation
when shown ambiguous stimuli, and to demostrate the interaction
between prior experience and expectancy. We are to randomly
select 10 people and individually show each person either the rat
card or man card, and then show them the ambiguous card, and
record their response. The results showed that the vast majority of
subjects who were shown the rat card first, stated the ambiguous
card to be the rat, whereas nearly half of the subjects initally shown
the man card, said they saw a rat in the ambiguous card.
Introduction: This experiment was originally conducted in 1961 by Bugelski and
Alampay. The results of their experiment were that the first figure
observed appeared to create an expectancy that influenced the
perception of the second figure (VCE Psychology: Units 3 & 4,
1996). The hypothesis is that when shown a stimulus of definite
description, and then shown an ambigious stimulus, we expect to
see the same thing in the ambiguous stimulus due to previous
experience.
Method: To complete this experiment, we will each randomly select 10
subjects who were completely unaware of the experiment. The
apparatus involved in this experiment is the cards that the pictures
will be on (See appendix 1).
5 of the subjects will be shown the rat card first, and the other 5 will
be shown the man card first. We will show them the initial cards and
record their responses which must be within 5 seconds. Then they
will be shown the ambiguous stimuli, and once again their responses
will be recorded within 5 seconds of showing the card. The class'
results will then be collected and tabulated.
Results: Our results are as follows:
Page 1 of 5
Phillip Tyson 12C
Rat-Man Experiment
ERA 1 – Unit 3
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Rat
Ambiguous
Ambiguous
Other
Man
Man
Rat
59
1
0
Ambiguous
Rat
Man
Other
Discussion: The hypothesis was found to be correct. The results show that the
51
8
1
Rat
Ambiguous
Man
60
0
0
vast