Metacognition & Unconscious Cognitive Control
Does unconscious cognitive control takes place via indirect metacognitive awareness?
Bachelor thesis Psychology University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Filip van Opstal Ghazal Nabili Tehrani
Metacognition & Unconscious Cognitive Control
Abstract
The innovative idea of the link between metacognition and unconscious cognitive control, introduced by Desender et al. was further investigated in this study. Using two different masks (Metacontrast or Pseudo) and varying the inter-trial intervals (short or long) in a response priming paradigm, the presence of metacognition and its role in eliciting (unconscious) cognitive adaptation, was studied.The amount of conflict adaptation within the long ITI trials with unconsciously perceived primes, compared to the amount of conflict adaptation in short ITI trials with unconsciously perceived primes, will determine the presence of a metacognitive experience of the unconscious conflict and whether or not it is responsible for triggering cognitive control. As expected a standard Gratton effect (conflict adaptation) was observed, pointing to the activation and occurrence of cognitive control during the task. However surprisingly no differences were observed between the amount of prime-visibility in the different mask conditions (conscious or unconscious). In general, the findings of this study suggest the involvement of metacognition in exerting unconscious cognitive control. Implications of the observed effects and possible limitations of the study design are discussed.
Introduction
Cognitive control is a high level executive function of the brain, a mental process that is needed for guiding goal oriented behaviour. It is essential for a successful fulfilment of everyday chores and for achieving ambitions. Ridderinkhof, Forstmann, Wylie, Burle and van den Wildenberg (2011) give the following scientific description of cognitive control:
“The ability to organise, coordinate and direct, in other words ‘orchestrate’ mechanisms of cognitive information processing according to internal needs and external goals.” (p. 174)
Thus cognitive control is the ability to regulate behaviour and thought processes in order to realise a certain goal and it is crucial for effectively adapting behaviour and doing the right thing at the right time.
According to Ridderinkhof et al. (2011) cognitive control has three main components: Flexibility vs. Stability (the ability to adequately shift between goal maintenance and goal neglect when necessary), Working memory (the ability to maintain and update relevant goal related information) and Inhibition (the ability to suppress and inhibit the irrelevant
conflicting responses). The interaction and balance between these three factors determines how efficiently and adequately a person can guide and control his/her goal oriented
behaviour.
In recent years cognitive control, its components and its neural mechanisms have been broadly studied. One of the main questions regarding cognitive control and in particular the inhibition aspect of it, is whether it can also take place unconsciously. In their paper, Dehaene and Naccache (2001) reviewed many different psychological and neuropsychological
scientific observations, regarding consciousness and came to the conclusion that next to a minimal presentation duration and enough visibility of a stimulus, there is also a sufficient amount of attention needed for something to be perceived consciously. Therefore it is assumed that attention is a necessary prerequisite of consciousness, and that conscious awareness is needed for cognitive tasks that require durable maintenance and active
monitoring of information, like cognitive control. The question of whether or not cognitive control requires consciousness, is important because its answer, could tell us more about the nature and function of consciousness.
According to many empirical studies using EEG and/or fMRI; when the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) detects a conflict, it alarms the dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) in order to trigger more cognitive control and reduce the impact of conflict (Miller
& Cohen, 2001). In the classical views, most researchers believed that this detection of conflict, requires conscious awareness and objective perception of the conflict. That is also the main reason why cognitive control is so strongly linked to consciousness. However, while the neural mechanisms and specific brain regions involve in cognitive control, are consistently brought to light using brain-imaging techniques, the theoretical aspects and cognitive
processes that underline cognitive control are still debated. In particular, when and how much cognitive control is elicited, is still debated among different researchers. The current study is mainly interested in when cognitive control is activated and tries to answer this question using the relation between consciousness and cognitive control. While van Gaal, Lamme and
Ridderinkhof (2010) argue that the objective unconscious perception of a conflict is sufficient to cause conflict adaptation, Questienne, Van Opstal, van Dijck and Gevers (2016) suggest that conflict adaptation requires metacognitive subjective experience of the conflict.
As noted earlier, Dehaene and Naccache (2001) suggested that cognitive control is a top-down function and thus per definition a conscious mental process that could not possibly take place without consciousness. However, Van Gaal et al. (2010) demonstrated that
unconscious cognitive control is possible during a conflict adaptation task. Conflict adaptation is a phenomenon that occurs when we need to choose the best option among different
competing contradictory (conflicting) action tendencies, in order to achieve a goal (Ridderinkhof et al., 2011). Once the (source of) conflict is noticed, we become more sensitive and alert to it and automatically more cognitive control is activated in order to deal with the conflict. So we compensate for the effect of the conflict and therefore it will have a smaller impact on our decision/behaviour the next time it appears. This phenomenon can be observed and measured in many different psychological conflict tasks like the Simon task, the Stroop task and the Eriksen Flanker task. In the Flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974) subjects are asked to respond to the direction of the central stimuli (the target) in a string of
objects (e.g. <>< ) and ignore the surrounding irrelevant objects (the flankers). The trials on which the central stimulus and the flankers have the same direction are called congruent (<<<) and the trials on which the central stimulus and the flankers have opposite directions are called incongruent (><>). The contradictory nature of information, in incongruent trials (the opposite directions of the target and the flankers) is what we refer to as a conflict. This conflict, described as: “simultaneously active and contradicting competing representations” (Carter & van Veen, 2017, p. 367); can either be objectively perceived (consciously) or subjectively experienced on a higher metacognitive level (unconsciously perceived).
In general people tend to respond faster and more accurate on the congruent trials in comparison to the incongruent trials, which is known as the congruency effect. Because of conflict adaptation, the observed congruency effect after an incongruent trial is smaller than the congruency effect after a congruent trial (Gratton, Coles & Donchin, 1992). This
prominent observation is called the Gratton effect and appears because; according to the conflict adaptation theory,when people experience a conflicting situation, they actively eliminate/ignore the irrelevant interfering stimuli in order to focus more on the relevant stimuli; because of this cognitive adjustment and insertion of more cognitive control, the impact of the perceived conflict, will be smaller on the next trial and performance will improve subsequently (Liu, Chen, Li & West, 2012). The main question here is whether or not this cognitive adjustment (conflict adaptation), can take place without conscious
awareness of the conflict and more importantly if a subjective (metacognitive) experience of the conflict, is necessary for the activation of cognitive control. In other words, is objective unconsciously perceived conflict enough to cause conflict adaptation or is a subjective experience of the conflict at metacognitive level, needed to activate cognitive adaptation.
As mentioned, the discussion about the role of consciousness in executing cognitive control, is still not settled and different researchers use different methods to find a proper
answer to this question, but the evidence is divided and there is not yet a consistent conclusion about this issue. Meanwhile, Desender et al. (2014) provide a new insight and claim that cognitive control can take place when a conflict is perceived unconsciously, but only if it is preceded by a subjective metacognitive experience. They state that cognitive control in a conflict adaptation task can be executed without conscious awareness of the conflict but via the indirect path of metacognitive awareness. Metacognition refers to “thinking about thinking” and is a mental skill that provides insight and awareness of our own thoughts and experiences (Martinez, 2006). It is an important mental ability that can determine and influence the development and functioning of other cognitive skills like decision making, reasoning and learning abilities. It is the ability to monitor, evaluate and regulate our own thoughts and other mental processes and works through conscious metacognitive experience (experiences, feelings and thoughts that we are aware of). Although metacognition is a broad term with differend specialised definitions within different fields of psychology; in the context of current study, metacognition simply refers to the subjective experiences regarding our own thoughts and behaviour (Desender, van Opstal, Hughes & Van den Bussche, 2016). Desender et al. (2004) think that the conscious metacognitive experience of a conflict (while doing a conflict adaptation task) is crucial for the activation of unconscious cognitive control. This can be studied and demonstrated by observing performance on a conflict adaptation task and determining whether cognitive adaptation appears with or without conscious awareness of the experienced conflict.
To determine if unconscious cognitive control takes place via the indirect path of subjective metacognitive awareness, a response priming task with partly masked primes, similar to the one used by Francken et al. (2011), is used with some modifications. In order to vary prime (conflict) visibility, two different masks are used, the Metacontrast-mask that covers the prime strongly and therefore causes an unconsciously perceived conflict; and the
Pseudo-mask that covers the prime weakly and therefore provides a more conscious experience of the conflict. We will also vary the time interval between the trials (Intertrial Time Intervals/ ITI), creating two conditions namely the short ITI condition wherein the ITI = 500 ms and the long ITI condition wherein the ITI = 3000 ms. The idea behind this
manipulation is the assumption that unconsciously perceived information will only briefly be processed and maintained in the brain and will rapidly extinguish by decay within a few milliseconds (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001). This is usually referred to as the “Implicit Decay theory” (Baddeley, 1986) and implies that information requires conscious deliberate attention in order to be processed, maintained, updated and encoded in memory. When information is not perceived consciously, it will not receive much attention and thus will not be saved for long.
In the current study; the difference in (the amount of) conflict adaptation, between consciously and unconsciously perceived primes, during short and long ITI’s is investigated. We expect to observe a general congruency effect; that is, a shorter reaction time and a higher accuracy rate for congruent trials in comparison to the incongruent trials. We also expect to observe conflict adaptation and more activation of cognitive control in response to
incongruent trials. Just as Van Gaal et al. (2010) demonstrated in their study, we also expect to see conflict adaptation within the short ITI trials. However if we also observe conflict adaptation within the long ITI trials, we can no longer state that it was achieved
unconsciously because unconscious information decays after a short amount of time (500 ms) and could not have been passed on the next trial. Therefore we can conclude that conflict adaptation in the long ITI trials was achieved via a conscious metacognitive experience. Thus if according to our hypothesis unconscious cognitive control indeed takes place via the indirect conscious path of metacognitive awareness, there should be no difference between short ITI trials and long ITI trials in the amount of observed conflict adaptation.
Method
Participants
Using the effect-size (R2 = 0.09) obtained by Questienne et.al (2016), an a-priori power analysis indicated that with an α of 0.05, twenty-four participants were needed for a power of 0.8. A total of twenty-seven students from the University of Amsterdam, aged between 18 and 35, participated in this study in exchange for course credit. The sample existed of 14 males and 13 females with a mean age of 22 years (SD = 2.13). All participants had corrected-to-normal vision and had signed an informed consent form prior to the
experiment.
Stimuli
In order to test the hypotheses, we used the response priming paradigm; and to assess prime visibility we used a signal detection (prime recognition) task. The same stimuli were used as the one used by Francken, Van Gaal & De Lange (2011). The only difference was that in this study we used two inter-trial intervals (ITI). The short ITI’s indicated an interval of 500 ms between the trials and the long ITI’s indicated an interval of 3500 ms (3.5 s) between the trials.
Similar to Francken et al. (2011), we used two different kind of masks to differentiate between the levels of visibility and awareness of the prime. The Pseudo-mask (shown in Figure 1. A) consists of a black arrow with a white rectangle inside it, and indicates a weak mask and thus conscious perception of the prime. The Metacontrast-mask (shown in Figure 1.
B) consists of a black arrow with a white contour inside it, and indicates a strong mask and thus unconscious perception of the prime. The trials on which the prime arrow and the
Mask/target arrow point to the same side are congruent trials and the trials on which the prime arrow and the mask/target arrow point to opposite sides are incongruent trials. In order to prevent any learning sequence effects the proportion of the congruent/incongruent trials was 50/50. Also the proportion of Metacontrast/Pseudo masks (unconscious/conscious
respectively) was 50/50. An example of a trial of the main task (B) and a trial of the signal detection task (A), is shown in Figure 1. For the short-ITI condition the fixation screen at the end of each trial, will last for 500 ms, as depicted in Figure 1. (B). For the long-ITI condition, this fixation screen will last 3500 ms.
Figure 1. Adopted from Francken et al. (2011), with modifications according to the aims & design of current study. (A) Shows the Prime recognition task sequence in which participants respond to the direction of
sequence in which participants respond to the direction of the Mask/Target arrow with Left or Right while ignoring the Prime. The mask used in (A) is a Pseudo-mask; the mask used in (B) is a
Metacontrast-mask.
Procedure
After receiving instructions and reading the information brochure, the participants would sign the informed consent form and take place in front of a computer and start the task. All participants start with the Flanker response priming task and do the prime recognition task at the end. The sequence of short/long ITI’s was counterbalanced between participants, half the participants started with the short ITI’s and changed to long ITI’s halfway through the experiment and the other halve started with the long ITI’s and switched to short ITI’s later. In total each participant completed 640 trials for the main response priming task, that were presented in eight blocks of 80 trials with short breaks in between. For the signal
detection/prime recognition task, each participant completed 480 trials (eight blocks of 60 trials) with short breaks in between. The entire experiment took about an hour to complete.
In the response priming task, participants had to detect and report the orientation of the mask/target arrow with their left or right hand accordingly as quickly and as possible. The mask/target arrow was a black arrow with inside it either a Pseudo-mask (shown in Figure 1. A) or a Metacontrast-mask (shown in Figure 1. B), depending on the shape of the inner contours of the mask. Each trial started with a fixation point (a black cross) in the middle of the screen, that lasted for 500 ms for the short ITI trials and 3500 ms for the long ITI trials. The fixation was then followed briefly (for 16.6 ms) by a prime that was a black arrow pointing to either left or right. The prime was first followed by a blank screen that lasted about 33 ms, then the mask/target arrow followed and lasted for 150 ms. As soon as the target
arrow was presented, participants had to decide on its orientation and express their decision by clicking the “L” button (for right) or the “D” button (for left) on the keyboard.
The signal detection (prime recognition) task that determined the visibility and
conscious awareness of the primes; was similar to the Flanker response priming task, with the difference that participants had to respond to the orientation of the prime arrow this time and ignore the mask arrow. The other main difference was that participants had to wait for a fixation point to appear after the presentation of the target, before they could respond. They also received feedback for the accuracy of their responses after each trial in the form of a green (correct) or a red (incorrect) cross.
Results
Reaction times
Two of the twenty-seven participants could not finish the response priming task because of technical difficulties with the computer and were therefore excluded from further analysis. Also all trials, in which Reaction times deviated 2.5 standard deviations from the mean Reaction time (RT), were identified as outliers and excluded. Because Incongruent trials in general have a higher RT than the Congruent trials, the Congruency effect of RTs can be calculated with the formula: Congruency = RT(of incongruent trials) – RT(of congruent trials). In order to account for the different conditions of the current trial (Congruent or
Incongruent), we used the Congruency effect as the outcome variable instead of RT. A 2x2x2 repeated measure factorial ANOVA was conducted for the remaining twenty-five participants (a total of 25x640 = 16000 trials) with Congruency effect of the correct trials as independent variable and three within-subjects factors each consisting of two levels: 2x ITI(short or long),
2x Mask(Metacontrast or Pseudo indicating respectively Conscious or Unconscious), 2x Previous trial (Congruent or Incongruent).
There was only a significant effect for ITI (F(1, 24) = 6.57, p = 0.017) with an effect-size of , mean Congruency effect was smaller in the short-ITI condition (M = 0.040)
compared to the long-ITI condition (M = 0.051). All the other main and interaction effects were not significant.
Error Rates
Error Rates (ER) are indications of the proportion of incorrect responses in each group. Again because Incongruent trials have a higher ER than the Congruent trials, the Congruency effect of ERs can be calculated with the formula: Congruency = ER (of
incongruent trials) – ER (of congruent trials). In order to account for the different conditions of the current trial (Congruent or Incongruent), we again used the Congruency effect as the outcome variable instead of ER. The same 2x ITI(short or long), 2x Mask(Metacontrast or Pseudo indicating respectively Conscious or Unconscious), 2x Previous trial (Congruent or Incongruent), repeated measure factorial ANOVA, was also conducted for the Congruency effect of Error Rates.
There was a significant effect for Previous Trial (F(1, 24) = 55.95, p < 0.001, η² = 0.7), with the smaller Congruency effect after incongruent trials (M = 0.055) compared to the congruent trials (M = 0.085). This can be interpreted as an interaction between congruency of current trial and congruency of the previous trial, which indicates the presence of the Gratton effect and occurrence of significant conflict adaptation during the task. There was also a significant effect for the interaction between ITI and Previous trial (F(1, 24) = 6.29, p = 0.019, η² = 0.21). This indicates that the ITI condition (short or long) has an significant effect on the amount of the observed Gratton effect. However, there was no significant difference
between the short-ITI and the long-ITI condition in the amount of Congruency effect (t(198) = 1.87, p = 0.063). The significant interaction-effect between ITI and Previous Trial, in the amount of Congruency effect, is shown in Figure 2, with a smaller Congruency effect after incongruent than after congruent trials; as expected. There were no other significant interaction-effects found, which can possibly be due to the masking limitations, this will further be reviewed in the discussion.
Figure 2. Interaction-effect of ITI and Previous Trial in Mean Congruency effect of Error
Rates. The mean Congruency effect of the current trial is smaller after Incongruent trials than after congruent trials.
Prime Visibility
Twenty of the twenty-seven participants completed the signal detection task, designed to control for prime visibility. The analysis in this section was conducted with de data of twenty participants (a total of 20x480 = 96000 trials). Of all the responses in the Pseudo-mask
condition, an average of 62% were correct, and the proportion of correct answers significantly differed from chance (t(19)= 15.95 , p < 0.001). Surprisingly, in the Metacontrast (Real) mask condition also an average of 61% of the responses were correct and the correct proportion again significantly differed from chance (t(19)= 16.56 , p < 0.001). This indicates that both masks were about the same strength in hiding/showing the prime and that contrary to our expectations, the metacontrast-mask was not stronger than the pseudo-mask. In order to determine the visibility of the prime, a d’ (Dprime) measure was calculate for each condition. This was done by treating the Right-pointing trials as the signal and the Left-pointing trials as noise. An average d’ of 0.74 was found for the Metacontrast-mask condition, which differed significantly from 0 (t(19)= 3.80 , p = 0.001). In the pseudo-mask condition an average d’ of 0.71 was found and it also differed significantly form 0 (t(18)= 3.63 , p = 0.002). A paired-sample t-test was conducted to determine whether the d’ in the conscious and unconscious conditions, significantly differed from each other; and it turned out to be not significant (t(37)= 0.075, p = 0.94). This again implies that the primes were mostly perceived consciously and equally visible in both conditions, which in turn indicates that the metacontrast-mask was not as strong as we expected. The limitations/shortcomings and further implications of this observation, will be addressed in the discussion.
Discussion
The observation within the RT analysis; namely that the Congruency effect in the short-ITI condition was smaller compared to the Congruency effect in the long-ITI condition, could be attributed to the fact that subjects were required to be more alert and pay attention more closely, in the short-ITI condition; because of the rapid speed of the trials (a delay of 500 ms). In the long-ITI condition, the delay between the trials is 3500 ms and although this
was chosen with a purpose, it is a relatively long time. Subjects could get bored in the delay period and once they realise that they have sufficient time between each trial, they might feel that there is no pressure and extreme need to focus on the screen and react fast. This could also account for the fact that there was no Gratton effect observed with the RT’s.
The Gatton effect observed in the Error Rate analysis, is an indication of activation and occurrence of conflict adaptation while performing the response priming task. This observation is according to the previously formed hypothesis and expectations of this study and also most other studies regarding cognitive control. As expected, there is interaction between the congruency/incongruency of the previous trial and the congruency/incongruency of the current trial with a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after
congruent trials. Aligned with the findings of this study, a prominent Gratton effect was also found in the earlier studies of Francken et.al (2011), Desender et.al (2013) and Questienne et.al (2016).
In contrast to the findings of Desender et.al (2013) but in accordance with the findings of Francken et.al (2011), we observed no main effects for Mask-condition (conscious or unconscious) in this study. The effects that were found regarding prime visibility can possibly account for the this finding in the response priming task. The fact that the d’ of both mask conditions (Metacontrast or Pseudo) differed significantly from 0, and thus were above chance level, could indicate that the primes (and thus conflicts) in both conditions (conscious and unconscious) were perceived equally and thus the metacontrast-mask was not strong enough to prevent the conscious perception of the primes.However, another explanation may be that the metacontrast-mask was a strong mask and could sufficiently hide the primes from conscious perception as it was intended to, but the problem was the feedback given after each trial to indicate a correct or incorrect response. It is possible that even though the primes were perceived unconsciously, the feedback created a pattern that helped the participants in
guessing the correct answered and thus performing at an above chance (conscious) level in an unconscious condition. Regardless of what the explanation for the observed prime visibility may be, it is considered as an important disadvantage and because of it, we need to be careful about making any inferences regarding the differences between consciously versus
unconsciously perceived primes (conflicts). This could also explain the fact that there were no significant effects found for Mask and/or interactions between Mask & ITI and between Mask & Previous Trial. For the replication and/or further explorations of the current study, the use of a sandwich mask in de unconscious condition, would be preferable, because as Questienne et al.(2016) demonstrated, a sandwich mask would make sure that the primes are perceived unconsciously as is desired.
Another point to consider regarding the results of this study within the context of similar research mentioned earlier, is that the entire design of this study and the theoretical justifications of it; rest on the assumption that unconscious information is processed briefly in the brain and will decay after a short amount of time (500 ms). Although there is strong evidence and many empirical observations, in favour of this assumption; some recent studies, using EEG, have demonstrated that unconsciously perceived stimuli will not decay after a short time, but are just processed in a different way (Gosseries, Di, Laureys & Boly, 2014). The possibility that unconscious information is not briefly processed but maintained inside the brain, is a very important factor and will play a major role in understanding the relation
between cognitive control and consciousness. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the outcome of new research regarding the nature of and the exact way, in which unconscious information is processed.
Another suggestion for future research, would be the use of other or combinations of different conflict tasks (like the Stroop and the Simon task) or even better to use a different tasks that measure different aspects of cognitive control. While the findings of this and similar
studies (Desender et al., 2016; Questienne et al., 2016 & Francken et al., 2011), are interesting and insightful, they are limited to only the ‘inhibition’ aspect of cognitive control and in order to make general inferences about the link between metacognition & cognitive control, it is necessary to investigate all aspects of cognitive control.
Lastly, although we observed relatively high error rates and slow reaction times, throughout the data, we should not infer that participants did not take the task seriously or that they were distracted during the task. Because, never the less, we observe the presence of the Gratton effect and activation of cognitive control within the error rates analysis, which would not have happened if the participants were not paying attention to the task demands.
In general despite some limitations in design (a weak metacontrast-mask that resulted in, no significant distinction between conscious and unconscious masks), we observe clear conflict adaptation effects in the data and no significant difference in the amount of
congruency effect between the short and the long ITI’s, which suggest the presence of metacognitive experience as the responsible factor for the activation and occurrence of cognitive control. And although it is difficult to make inferences about the exact nature of the relation between metacognition and cognitive control, we could conclude that this study produced new insight and useful ideas worth further examination. The temporal relation between a (consciously or unconsciously) perceived conflict and the amount of cognitive control, that it activates; could help us understand the true level on which cognitive control operates on and its underlying mechanisms.
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Reflectieverslag
(a) hoe je met de verkregen feedback bent omgegaan:
Na het krijgen van feedback, heb ik meestal eerst de kleine punten met betrekking tot speling en zinsformuleringen verbeterd; daarna ben ik verder gegaan naar de grote inhoudelijke punten. Ik heb bv. de feedback gekregen dat ik de relatie tussen
‘cognitive controle’ & ‘Consciousness’ uitgebreider moet beschrijven, daarom heb ik in mijn eindversie geprobeerd om zowel de cognitieve theorieën als neurologische werkingsmechanismen daarvan te bespreken. Voor het verbeteren van mijn inleiding, ben ik vooral teruggegaan naar de artikels die ik gevonden had en de 3 artikels die we in het beging van u kregen (Dehaene et al., 2001; Van Gaal et al.2010 & Desender et al., 2014). Ik heb ook veel gebruik gemaakt van de college slides van het 1e semester van de heer Ridderinkhof over ‘Cognitive controle & Bewustzijn’.
Voor het schrijven en verbeteren van mijn ‘Methode’ sectie, heb ik vooral gebruik gemaakt van de artikels van Francken et al. (2011) & Questienne et al. (2016) voor de juiste beschrijving van de opzet en de definities en uitleg van verschillende Masks. Na de laatste feedback (op de 1e volledige versie), heb ik mijn hele verslag grondig gelezen en heb ik geprobeerd om bepaalde stukjes opnieuw te herschrijven voor meer helderheid en een betere samenhang. Ik heb ook veel extra uitleg toegevoegd en geprobeerd om alle kleine details helder en volledig te beschrijven (vooral in mijn inleiding).
In mijn ‘Resultaten’ sectie heb ik een paar dingen aangepast en heb ik ook een extra t-test gedaan tussen de shor & long ITIs (naar aanleiding van uw feedback).
En ik heb veel tijd besteed aan mijn ‘Discussie’ om het volledig te krijgen, ik had zelf een paar discussie en verbeter punten bedacht, maar heb ook ter inspiratie bij de artikels (Francken et al., 2011; Desender et al., 2014; Questienne et al., 2016 & Desender et al., 2016) gekeken.
(b) waar het project goed is verlopen en waar dat minder goed verliep:
In het algemeen verliep alles naar mijn mening goed, ik kon goed samenwerken met de rest van ons groep en kreeg altijd snel antwoord op mijn vragen (van zowel groepsgenoten als mijn begeleider). Ik vond het heel fijn dat we samen de deadlines konden bepalen en dat we daar best vrij in waren. De technische problemen bij de testfase, zorgden voor enige stress, maar uiteindelijk hebben we toch genoeg deelnemers getest dus het was niet zo erg. Ik vond het alleen minder fijn dat de tijdsinterval tussen het inleveren van de eerste versie en de definitieve versie zo kort was, vooral ook omdat het in de tentamenperiode viel, het was vooral erg stressvol maar uiteindelijk is het wel gelukt om mijn verslag mooi af te ronden, ik had wel liever iets meer tijd gewild om de laatste puntjes op de i te zetten.
(c) wat volgens jou de sterke en zwakkere punten van je onderzoeksverslag zijn: Ik heb me vooral zorgen gemaakt over mijn resultaten analyse omdat we tot nu toe vooral met ‘clean’ data hebben gewerkt in SPSS en dit eigenlijk de eerste keer was dat ik de complete analyses zelf moest doen en bij bepaalde dingen zelf moest beslissen wat de juiste keuze voor mijn data zijn. Ik heb veel youtube filmpjes gekeken en mijn oude statistiek college slides erbij gepakt en denk dat het uiteindelijk wel redelijk gelukt is. Ik merk ook dat ik veel geleerd heb door dingen zelf te moeten achterhalen in SPSS, maar omdat we verschillende resultaten hebben verkregen in ons groep, maak ik me ook wel zorgen over de juistheid van mijn analyses. Ook het interpreteren
van de resultaten sectie blijf ik lastig vinden, al werd het een stuk duidelijker nadat ik mijn feedback en antwoord op mijn e-mail had gekregen.
Ik heb veel tijd en aandacht besteed aan mijn inleiding en heb geprobeerd om alle details helder te beschrijven en volledige uitleg te geven over relevante theorieën en begrippen. Hierdoor denk ik dat mijn inleiding de sterkste gedeelte van mijn verslag is. Ik heb ook weinig feedback gekregen over mijn methode sectie, dus denk dat dat gedeelte ook in orde is.
(d) hoe je met de ethische aspecten van het onderzoek bent omgegaan: Ik heb niet echt te maken gehad met ethische problemen bij de testfase, ons onderzoek had ook niet echt ethische aspecten die uitgebreid overwogen moesten worden. We hadden natuurlijk de Informed consent formuleren gebruikt en tijdens testen hebben we het steeds duidelijk gemaakt dat deelname geheel vrijwillig is en dat er op elk gewenst moment gestopt zou kunnen worden. Ik moest persoonlijk aan 2 deelnemers, credit punten toewijzen wat goed is gegaan en verder was één
deelnemer een beetje geïtereerd omdat de test naar zijn mening te lang duurde en ik had hem vriendelijke geprobeerd duidelijk te maken dat dit nou eenmaal de
procedure is bij psychologische experimenten en dat er meestal veel trials nodig zijn voor nauwkeurigheid en een betrouwbare meting van een psychologisch construct, en toen had hij (vrijwillig) de test gewoon afgemaakt.
