Question:

Will I feel like a scientific experiement if I participate in a research project at the UW and what can I expect from that experience?

Hypothesis:

A man with thick glasses and a lab coat will adhere wires to my head with sticky little circles because this is the classic perception of many experiments and research studies.

Procedure:

1. Contact a researcher running a study at the UW.

2. Participate in the study and take notes about the scientific process.

3. Conduct interviews.

4. Write an article answering the above-stated question.

Materials:

1 Daily reporter

1 computer

1 computer mouse

1 survey

1 voice recorder

Observations:

Instead of the expected lab-coat-clad prototype, a man in a striped Abercrombie shirt guides me through the halls of the psychology-department basement. His name is Jeffrey Lin, and he’s a second-year graduate student aiming to receive his doctorate in psychology. We sit down in his small office, him behind his computer and me next to a Rock Band drum set.

Lin is amiable and willing to explain the ins and outs of the tests he conducts through the vision science department, one of which I’ll be participating in today. Most experiments in the department are related to attention and how the human brain perceives certain visual stimuli. Though the one I’ll participate in today involves television, Lin also works with video games, which explains the Rock Band set in his office.

“A lot of the studies in the vision sciences are created just by intuition,” Lin said. “So you’re just experiencing some event in the real life and trying to describe it in terms of how your brain manipulates and deals with all these things that you’re seeing. We just try to explain behavior, basically.”

Once he nails down the concept of an experiment, it’s time to organize the ideas by turning to the scientific method.

“In our lab, we have to make what’s called a pitch or proposal,” he tells me. “You have to make up a hypothesis and some predictions. Then you do a literature search, or you do a review on the field and why this should possibly work and why they should put money in it.”

Lin then leads me into the testing room, which appears to be a glorified study room, containing just a desk, a chair and a black computer. I sign a two-page consent form that guarantees I understand the process of the procedure, and we’re set to go.

And then I’m faced with a daunting task: getting paid to watch an hour of my favorite television shows.

The process is easy enough: Sit back, relax and watch the show (Scrubs, in my case). Then, when a commercial pops up, simply click the mouse to fast-forward through the commercials and pay attention to what you’re seeing on the screen. After a half hour of Scrubs with some brief commercial breaks including pet food ads and candy bars, I’m on to a half hour of the pilot episode of The Office with similar commercials.

I’m then given a survey, the purpose of which is to analyze how well I’ve processed the commercials that flashed by. The pictures on the page help to conjure up the memories of the quick snapshots I retained from the fast-forwarded commercials, and by linking the two in my brain, I feel like I succeeded in filling out the survey correctly.

Data:

Results from these types of experiments provide specific information on how the human brain operates, in addition to aiding the progression of psychology as a whole, Lin said. In fact, many of the studies from the UW’s vision science department have been quoted in newspapers, television and even Science Magazine.

But Lin feels that one of the biggest problems with psychology is that people don’t necessarily view it as a “real” science.

“By participating in actual research,” Lin said, “they can see that this is real science, and we are answering important questions in these labs.”

Every quarter, the UW psychology department makes a large amount of studies available to undergraduates in lower-level psychology classes in order to provide an opportunity to see the scientific method in action.

Associate Professor of psychology Geoffrey Boynton observed mutual benefits in study participation.

“Nominally, having a subject pool is great for the students, so they can learn what different experiments are like,” Boynton said. “But of course, it’s useful for the laboratories because we have a free pool of subjects to use.”

In order to get a wide demographic, Lin decided to open the study up to the general public. Consequently, the study takes in various people from outside of the UW. Phil Palios, a sophomore and psychology major at Bellevue College, plans to transfer to the UW next year and chose to participate in order to observe how the psychology department works.

Conclusion:

Anders Dallum, a junior psychology major who is assisting with Lin’s study, views psychology experiments as a very helpful, hands-on experience.

Anders Dallum, a junior psychology major who is assisting with Lin’s study, views psychology experiments as a very helpful, hands-on experience.

“These tests provide something more meaningful than just reading straight out of a textbook,” he said. “These are real-life things, and they have practical applications, even if they’re really minute.”

And so I’ve discovered this reciprocal relationship that exists between us and psychology departments that require human subjects: While they need our assistance in enriching the variety of subjects, we in turn can learn about what it takes to test and observe the intricacies of the human mind.

As I participated, I not only enjoyed the process and learned about what it takes to create and coordinate a test like this, I realized that I could further advance the experimenter’s knowledge simply by the results of my efforts as a test subject.

“I think it’s important to participate,” Palios said. “In the classes I take, we’re required to do all the tests we study. So participating in other tests helps to really understand the context of what we’re learning about.”

Reach contributing writer Kristen Steenbeeke at development@dailyuw.com.