Queens College
City University of New York
Method
Participants The participants of the card sort experiment, were twenty-one psychology students enrolled in psychology 213W. Four of the students were male and seventeen of the remaining students were female.
Students participated in this experiment to satisfy a course requirement.
Setting
The experiment took place in room 337, the experimental psychology lab room in the science building of Queens College, CUNY.
Materials
The participants used a standard deck of playing cards, which had 52 cards in four suits. Participants used cellular devices with 1 second precision, as time keeping devices and a pencil or black or blue ink pen to record data on a piece of paper. The internet based program VassarStats was used to calculate the T-Tests.
Experimental Design
A within-subject counterbalanced experimental design was used for this study (ABBA). In this design, each participant received each condition and served as his or her own control. The independent variable in this experiment was the method of sorting; condition A was a 2-sort alternative and condition B was a 4 sort alternative. The dependent variable in this experiment was the change in the response time, which was measured in seconds. Response time was the time it took the participant to sort all cards into corresponding piles, until the last card is on the table and no longer in the hand of the participant. The Null hypothesis in this study was the differing levels of the independent variable will produce no change in the dependent variable. The alternative hypothesis was the changes in the independent variable would result in changes of the dependent variable.
Procedure
The twenty-one participants divided into groups of two, because there was an odd number, there was a group of three. When groups were