The meterstick drop is a tried and true lab exercise for measuring reaction time – often presented in an inquiry-based format with students testing their own reaction-time hypotheses. In this lab, comparison of meterstick-drop results with dot-making results facilitates discussion of how and why reaction time varies by activity. This point is then emphasized by having participants complete the Interactive Stroop Effect Experiment by Eric Chudler (available online from the University of Washington’s “Neuroscience for Kids” website). The well-studied Stroop effect test uses the time a person takes to read a word list aloud as a proxy measure for cognitive processing load. When a color word’s meaning and ink-color conflict, the reading-aloud task time takes longer. The Stroop experiment’s use of read-aloud task time to investigate cognitive processing provides an introduction, in turn, to Harvard’s Project Implicit®. Participation in one of that site’s less controversial implicit bias tests is the basis for a final discussion of what reaction times reveal and how experimental design of reaction-time tests can be optimized.
Keywords: reaction time, Inquiry-based learning, Stroop effect, implicit bias
University of Ottawa (2019)
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