What was your first experiment ever

Emily McDougal answered on 15 Mar 2023:

The first experiment I conducted was using eye-tracking technology to observe where children looked during a video of a lesson. I was interested in whether the level of visual information behind the teacher (for example, posters and other displays you would see in a classroom) impacted where children looked and how much they remembered from the lesson. I found that children were distracted by the background, but that this only impacted their learning for children with poorer verbal skills.

Eileen Xu answered on 15 Mar 2023:

My first experiment looked at what sorts of social media young people with and without mental illness used. I did a survey to find out how long they spent on social media, whether they were using certain platforms more than others. It was a while ago now, so I can’t remember the results!

Hannah Fawcett answered on 15 Mar 2023:

The first experiment I designed was looking at whether the timing that a suspect/defendant presents their alibi affects the verdicts that jurors reach. We found that yes, it could impact on jurors when defendants delayed giving an alibi if the witness to their alibi wasn’t a family member. Late ‘ambush alibis’ were viewed as more deceptive and the providers seen as less trustworthy.

Kirsten Russell answered on 15 Mar 2023:

The first experiment I conducted looked to see whether older adults sleep was like and whether it was better or worse than younger adults. We found that older adults slept less than younger adults, and their sleep was more fragmented (they woke up more frequently during the night). We wanted to understand more about this topic, because sleep is really important and we wanted to be able to help older adults who were not getting a good sleep each night!

Laura Joyner answered on 15 Mar 2023:

The first study I designed looked at how our feelings about an issue (in this instance Brexit) influenced whether people could correctly identify real and fake social media headlines about said issue, and if their judgements became more biased (they did)

Joanne Cummings answered on 20 Mar 2023:

My first experiment investigated whether those receiving an intervention to increase their physical activity behaviour, did in comparison to the control group. The intervention comprised ‘implementation intentions’ i.e. implementing your intentions to perform a behaviour with a goal directed plan of where, when and how. The intervention wasn’t effective on this occasion.

Jo Van Herwegen answered on 21 Mar 2023:

I developed my first experiment myself as an MSc student. Unfortunately my supervisor was not an expert in the field so couldn’t help me much. I examined if children with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, have indeed an atypical semantic lexicon (how we store words in the brain) compared to typically developing children. I designed a priming task to see how fast participants responded to correct and incorrect word pairs and sentences (e.g. when hearing the sentence: “Please give me the salt and pepper” the participant is faster to respond that this is correct than when hearing “Please pass me the salt and sea”).
The task had some design flaws though and my sample size was very small so I never published it. But it was a huge learning curve and I enjoyed designing the experiment.

Greta Defeyter answered on 24 Mar 2023:

My first experiment I conducted as a third year undergraduate student. It looked at how young children use objects to solve problems. It was based on Duncker’s notion of functional fixedness, and whether children have flexibility in terms of how they can use objects. It went pretty well and I published the study one year later. So, I learnt about ethics, testing young children, working with school staff and how to write an academic paper. A steep learning curve but my supervisor provided me with lots of support and help. She is still a good friend (some 23 years later).

Question: What was your first experiment ever

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