EXPLORING THE EFFECT

OF COLOR ON COGNITIVE

TASK PERFORMANC

ESMeredith Savage

Ayushe Sharma

Angela Shelton

UAB DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

PREVIOUS STUDIES Multiple studies

have been done on individual colors and their effects on people Many of these

contradict one another

Past research also focuses primarily on primary colors.

WHY THE INTEREST IN COLOR? Colors have a

significant impact on people’s emotional state and, accordingly, have a profound influence in the following fields: Advertising/Marketing Education Fashion

WHY THE INTEREST IN COLOR?Many professionals desire to understand whether the color of a room or computer screen can affect behavior or learning.

Example: some studies propose that green enhances mathematical ability while other studies show that green enhances artistic ability.

Click icon to add picture

OUR STUDY Our study will use a non-primary color (orange)

which many people are not likely to have strong, linked associations.

We have developed a 20-minute slideshow which places various pictures and words on various background colors.

Each time a slide appears with our target background color, that image or word will be either associated with success, failure, or be neutral. The images/words for other colors in the slideshow

will be held constant.

HYPOTHESES

HYPOTHESIS #1 It is not the chromatic properties of

colors which affect people cognitively; instead, we propose that it is the associations that one links to each color that may affect behavior or cognitive ability when color is a factor.

HYPOTHESIS #2 Participants who are shown the

“success” images and words presented on the target color will have a higher recall on the test words due to a positive association with those images/words.

HYPOTHESIS #3 Participants who are shown the

“neutral” or “failure” images and words presented on the target color will have a lower rate of recall on the test words in comparison to those in the “success” condition.

METHODS

DESIGN Single-Factor Design

3 levels

Independent variable:Level of color

Neutral condition Positive condition Negative condition

Dependent variable: # of words recalled

PARTICIPANTS Participants were recruited from the UAB

pool of PY 101 students.

Students were recruited using standardized sign-up sheets. Posted in Campbell Hall on the 2nd floor

PROCEDURE-PART ONE Conditioning

Participants at each level will be presented one of three slideshowsNeutral conditionPositive conditionNegative condition

SlideshowColor of interest: orange50 slides of alternative colors—20 total orange

slides, and 30 slides of other various colors (red, green, black, purple, etc).

PROCEDURE-PART TWO Testing the participants

Envelopes with sheets of colored paper were randomly given to participants.

Given list of 25 words and asked to memorize as many as possible in 3 minutes.

Then, they were asked to write down all of the words they remember.

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION Neutral condition for color of interest

Neutral condition (continued)

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION Positive condition for color of interest

A+

Positive condition (continued)

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION Negative condition for color of interest

Negative condition (continued)

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION Other colors

Other colors (continued)

STATISTICAL ANALYSES First:

Compute mean of total words recalled for each of the three conditions in this experiment (neutral, positive, negative).

Second: One way ANOVA (analysis of variance) to compare

the means of the three independent conditions. This statistical measure will allow us to determine if the factor has a statistically significant impact.

Third: Multiple Comparisons Procedure: Fisher’s protected

t-test to test specific differences among the means of the 3 conditions

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

PROJECTED RESULTS

LIMITATIONS

CONCLUSIONS This is like a mini-discussion section Remind them what our main finding was Tell why we think our results were not as

informative as we had hoped.

FUTURE STUDIES AND SIGNIFICANCE Tell why it is important or interesting, or

tell what the next question to investigate is