Cognitive Psychology

Ever wondered how we study people and the way they think?

Here is some of the work IĀ did looking into inductive/deductive reasoning, decision-making and mental processes at one of the best research labs in Australia. No bias of course.

ExperimentĀ |

Everyday I'm Shuffling ABĀ Testing.

There are so many things to think about when you're designing an experiment.
  • What you're actually trying to measure
  • Independent and dependent variables
  • Conditions and/or groups
  • Confounding variables
  • Controlling for the weather...
It's rigorous and meticulous because the goal is to investigate something that will add to our scientific knowledge and understanding of the world. Heavy stuff.

Programming the Experiment.

This was my favourite part. Figuring out how to randomise groups, show different trials, export the data, and making sure it WORKED.
Writing in HTML/CSS/JS

Example of an Experiment

In this particular experiment, we were investigating how star ratings and number of reviewers affected preference for a product on an e-Commerce site.
Example of 1 trial. The entire experiment contained 66 trials.
A different experiment to the one above. Clicking on a card revealed the other side.

Testing on Participants.

To get enough data, we needed to run A LOT of participants. Over the years, I've probably run more than 300 participants in the lab.

DataĀ |

Collating the Data.

Cleaning the data in R.
Most of the time, the raw data comes back looking quite ugly. R is my best friend when it comes to collating the data.
Raw data. Needs cleaning.
Beautiful, beautiful data. šŸ¤¤

Analysing the Data.

Statistics kind of gets a bad rep, but IĀ think it's cool. Psychology IS a science, everybody!Ā 
Some analyses from one part of a study
Looking at trends. R is also great for creating figures.

Iterating for the Next Experiment.

Often, what comes out of an experiment is MORE QUESTIONS. To keep refining the robustness of the research, each experiment is often an iteration of a previous one.

FindingsĀ |

Writing it up.

The point of experiments is to investigate something and find answers. This could be one experiment, or a whole set of experiments.

My Honours thesis was 95 pages, 15,000 words. Doing experiments is important, but being able to articulate the findings and what impact it has is equally, if not more, important.

Presenting the Research.

Of course, sharing your findings is a must in research. Over time, presenting my research has taught me how to explain complex theories and ideas in simple english.
Some slides from a lab presentation I did in front of LEADING EXPERTS in Cognition

Publishing in a Journal.

Getting your research through peer-review and published in a reputable journal is the dream. IĀ can now say that I've contributed to advancing the frontiers of human knowledge in science and Psychology!Ā 

Hayes, B. K., Wei, P., Dunn, J. C., & Stephens, R. G. (2019). Why is logic so likeable? A single-process account of argument evaluation with logic and liking judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(4), 699-719. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000753