Pub­lished 1st Feb 2021

 

Gorilla is a bril­liant tool for cre­at­ing online exper­i­ments and col­lect­ing data from par­tic­i­pants in the lab or online. It is free for users to design and build tasks, preview them, and share them with col­lab­o­ra­tors, which means that there is a mul­ti­tude of ways to use Gorilla inside and outside of the class­room for free. Below are a few ways that we think Gorilla could be used as a useful and low-main­te­nance tool for teach­ing behav­iour­al science.

Table of Contents

Show, don’t tell: Teach­ing Research Methods in Psychology

With Gorilla, you can demon­strate psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na impact­ful­ly by getting your stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate in the exper­i­ments that led to cor­ner­stone psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies. Beyond study­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal effects, learn­ing about psy­chol­o­gy also requires an under­stand­ing of the sci­en­tif­ic method, exper­i­men­ta­tion, and the his­tor­i­cal researchers and exper­i­ments that taught us what we know about the field today.

Using Gorilla inside and outside of the class­room will allow your stu­dents to engage in all of these sub­jects simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in a modern, hands-on envi­ron­ment.

 

Fun Psy­chol­o­gy Exper­i­ments for the Classroom

Our team has built a wide range of classic exper­i­ments that show­case some of the most iconic psy­cho­log­i­cal tasks — from the Stroop task to the Wis­con­sin Card Sorting Task — that are avail­able for anyone to preview, even without a Gorilla account. We invite pro­fes­sors and lec­tur­ers to use pre-exist­ing classic exam­ples — or build their own tasks with a free account — to create class­room activ­i­ties that will engage stu­dents and teach them about psy­chol­o­gy and exper­i­men­ta­tion at the same time.

For example, why not use Gorilla to present a task in the class­room, and ask stu­dents to show hands to demon­strate the effect? Or next time you are writing up a syl­labus, add a link to a real task that stu­dents can expe­ri­ence them­selves.

If there is a task that you want to demon­strate and it’s not on the list, let the Gorilla team know – we’d be delight­ed to add it for you.

 

 

Primacy and Recency Class Activity

Objec­tive:
Learn about Primacy and Recency.

Activ­i­ty:
Expe­ri­ence the primacy and recency effect first­hand. Running this experiment demon­stra­tion in the class­room is easy and straight­for­ward! Simply project the experiment onto a lecture screen (click­ing the ‘Launch the experiment’ button). Gorilla will go through the demon­stra­tion step-by-step and provide instruc­tions, so simply sit back and let the demon­stra­tion begin.

Launch the experiment!

What will happen:
Fol­low­ing the onscreen instruc­tions, your stu­dents will be shown a list of stimuli and asked to remem­ber them. Once all the stimuli are pre­sent­ed, the stu­dents are chal­lenged to write down as many as possible.

Once the stu­dents have written down their answers, they are asked to raise their hands for three stimuli (the first, last, and middle one). Count and compare how many people could remem­ber each item. You can write the per­cent­age on the screen. There should be fewer stu­dents who recall seeing the middle stimuli, which would demon­strate the primacy and recency effect.

Outcome:
This prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tions teaches the stu­dents about the primacy and recency effect.

Exper­i­ments show that when par­tic­i­pants are pre­sent­ed with a list of words, they tend to remem­ber the first few and last few words and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list.

This is known as the serial posi­tion effect. The ten­den­cy to recall earlier words is called the primacy effect; the ten­den­cy to recall the later words is called the recency effect.

This effect is also explained to the stu­dents during the demonstration.

Further Reading:

Orig­i­nal paper: Murdock, B. B. Jr. (1962). The serial posi­tion effect of free recall. Journal of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy, 64(5), 482–488, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0045106.

A more recent experiment apply­ing the effect to student learn­ing: Castel, A.D. (2008). Metacog­ni­tion and learn­ing about primacy and recency effects in free recall: The uti­liza­tion of intrin­sic and extrin­sic cues when making judg­ments of learn­ing. Memory & Cog­ni­tion, 36, 429–437. https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.2.429

 

Memory Intru­sion Class Activity:

Objec­tive:
Under­stand the memory error intrusion.

Activ­i­ty:
Project Gorilla’s Memory intru­sion task by click­ing the ‘Launch the experiment’ button and go through the demon­star­tion. Engage with the stu­dents by reading out the instructions.

The stu­dents will be told to look at the screen, mem­o­ris­ing a list of words. They will be asked to remem­ber as many of the items as pos­si­ble. Fol­low­ing the stimuli pre­sen­ta­tion, the Gorilla demon­stra­tion will present the stu­dents with some words — some having come from the stimuli set and some related but not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal task. The stu­dents are instruct­ed to raise their hand if they believed the word was includ­ed in the items they had just seen on the screen.

Launch the experiment!

Outcome:
This prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tions teaches the stu­dents about a type of memory error called intrusion.

This error occurs when people falsely remem­ber the pres­ence of a word due to its seman­tic sim­i­lar­i­ty to other words. In this example, the student may have remem­bered the word ‘sleep’ even though it did not appear in the orig­i­nal list, due to its sim­i­lar­i­ty to other words such as ‘tired’.

This is a classic exper­i­men­tal design often used in psy­chol­o­gy, and the task, called the Deese-Roedi­ger-McDer­mott (DRM) Task, has many applications.

Further Reading:
Orig­i­nal paper: Deese, J. (1959). On the pre­dic­tion of occur­rence of par­tic­u­lar verbal intru­sions in imme­di­ate recall. Journal of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy, 58(1), 17–22, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046671.

A more recent article out­lin­ing the use of the DRM in psy­chol­o­gy: Gallo, D. A. (2010) False mem­o­ries and fan­tas­tic beliefs: 15 years of the DRM illu­sion. Memory & Cog­ni­tion, 38 (7), 833–848, https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.38.7.833.

 

Stroop Effect Activ­i­ty for Classrooms

Objec­tive:
Learn about the Stroop effect.

Stroop Effect Activ­i­ty:
Click on the ‘Launch the experiment!’ button. Fol­low­ing the onscreen instruc­tions, your stu­dents will be asked to say (shout togeth­er) the colour of the font of words that are pre­sent­ed to them.

The initial trials are all con­gru­ent, it will be easy, and your class will shout the correct response togeth­er.  Then there will be incon­gru­ent trials, and they’ll either be slower, or chant togeth­er the wrong answer.  This will make them laugh, and give them a vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence of the con­fu­sion in the brains for incon­gru­ent trials.

Once all the stimuli are pre­sent­ed, the stu­dents will be told about the dif­fer­ence between con­gru­ent and incon­gru­ent trials, explain­ing the Stroop Effect.

Launch the experiment!

Stroop Effect Experiment

Stroop Test Procedure:

These are the instruc­tions your stu­dents will see when launch­ing the Stroop experiment:

In this task, you will see colour names (red, green, blue, orange), printed in various dif­fer­ent colours. Every time a word appears on the screen, you have to say the colour the word is printed in out loud.
Remem­ber, say the colour the word is printed in, not just reading the word out loud.
Let’s have a quick prac­tice round. There will be a fix­a­tion point, then a word will appear. Say the name of the colour the word is printed in.

Outcome:

This prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tion can be used to teach stu­dents about the Stroop Effect.

Naming the font colour of a printed word is an easier and quicker task if word meaning and font colour match (are con­gru­ent). When the colour and word are con­gru­ent, the response should be clear, but when they are incon­gru­ent many people will make mistakes.

Basi­cal­ly, when the colour and word are con­gru­ent, the response should be clear, but when they are incon­gru­ent many people will make mistakes.

Reading:
Orig­i­nal paper: Stroop, J. R. 1935. Studies of inter­fer­ence in serial verbal reac­tions. Journal of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy, 18(6), 643–662, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054651

Paper sum­maris­ing what is known after 50 years of using the Stroop effect. MacLeod, Colin M. 1991. Half a Century of Research on the Stroop Effect: An Inte­gra­tive Review. Psy­cho­log­i­cal Bul­letin 109, 163–203.

 

Gear up to compete: Grant-Writing in Academia

Despite its impor­tance in acad­e­mia, grant-writing is almost never covered in formal cur­ric­u­la. An in‑class grant com­pe­ti­tion can be a fun and com­pet­i­tive way of getting student to think about research ques­tions that they’d like to answer, while giving them valu­able prac­tice writing a grant application.

A sample process might go like this:

  • Sep­a­rate stu­dents into groups. Each group must produce a 1000-word grant appli­ca­tion and create the pro­to­col for their study in Gorilla.
  • The groups present their appli­ca­tion and Gorilla experiment to the class.
  • Stu­dents and lec­tur­ers judge the grant appli­ca­tions and give feedback.
  • The class gets to see the process from the funder’s per­spec­tive when they vote on what study should be funded.

This type of activ­i­ty pushes stu­dents to develop novel ideas and design their own research inde­pen­dent­ly. This could poten­tial­ly even provide stu­dents with a working experiment that they could use to test their ideas using real par­tic­i­pants for a final project or the begin­nings of a Master’s or PhD proposal.

 

Get Psy­chol­o­gy Stu­dents Cre­at­ing Their Own Exper­i­ments to Teach Research Methods

Digital exper­i­men­ta­tion is becom­ing increas­ing­ly common in indus­try, and psy­chol­o­gy stu­dents are well placed to gain valu­able expe­ri­ence in this field. Using Gorilla, stu­dents can expe­ri­ence first-hand the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing exper­i­ments using their free accounts.

Design­ing a hands-on activ­i­ty to learn these skills alone or in groups can help stu­dents to engage the the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal aspects of exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gy at the same time. This can be accom­pa­nied by a lit­er­a­ture review and experiment design chal­lenge in order to create a major assign­ment with option­al data col­lec­tion and analysis.

Example:

A great method to use here is the IAT. It’s easy to come up with lots of hypothe­ses and it intro­duces stu­dents to behav­iour­al research and the idea of con­gru­ent and incon­gru­ent trials. There are three IAT tem­plates in Gorilla here. Why not make the test fun by asking ques­tions like:

  • Do appli­cants’ tattoos affect employ­ers’ hiring preferences?
  • What effect do colours have on shop­pers’ behav­iours? (Red for romance, blue for health, green for the environment?)
  • Do blondes really have more fun?

Stu­dents learn valu­able lessons while oper­a­tional­is­ing an IAT. They’ll learn that choos­ing images that prime the desired idea without bias is a skill that takes prac­tice.  And more gen­er­al­ly, that before believ­ing the results of a paper, it’s impor­tant to under­stand the methods and the stimuli used.

Read more about Uni­ver­si­ty College Lon­don’s expe­ri­ence giving their stu­dents the oppor­tu­ni­ty to design their own exper­i­ments — and how that led to three first-year stu­dents work being peer-reviewed and accept­ed to a to a psy­chol­o­gy conference.

 

Science Prac­tice versus Science History

I have a con­fes­sion: I didn’t always enjoy science at school.  The process of repro­duc­ing exper­i­ments that had already been done, left me some­what cold.  It wasn’t until I got to uni­ver­si­ty, and started design­ing my own exper­i­ments, to answer my own curios­i­ty, that I fell in love with the sci­en­tif­ic method.

I see this dis­tinc­tion as the dif­fer­ence between teach­ing Science History and teach­ing Science Prac­tice.  The prac­tice of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery is excit­ing, exhil­a­rat­ing and often frus­trat­ing!  But it demands your atten­tion and makes you feel alive.

It’s a hugely cre­ative process­es, and requires bring­ing a whole range of skills and crit­i­cal think­ing together.

As an aside, I’ve never under­stood why the sci­ences aren’t con­sid­ered cre­ative sub­jects. You are lit­er­al­ly cre­at­ing knowledge!

First there’s the research and assim­i­la­tion of what has been pub­lished, then finding a novel ques­tion, then design­ing and build­ing and experiment, and finally the data pre-pro­cess­ing and analy­sis. That’s a lot of skills for one person to have!

My wish is that more stu­dents get to expe­ri­ence the joy of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery for them­selves. There’s some­thing hugely hum­bling and lib­er­at­ing in letting go of “knowing” and embrac­ing “dis­cov­ery”.  Hans Rosling, I think said it best: “The stress reduc­ing habit of only car­ry­ing opin­ions for which you have strong sup­port­ing facts.”

So, in a nut­shell, that’s why I created Gorilla: To allow teach­ers to gift stu­dents the expe­ri­ence of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery, so that they can fall in love with the sci­en­tif­ic method like I did.  If they can also turn into cit­i­zens that demand social, eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal deci­sion are based on evi­dence, not ide­ol­o­gy, that would­n’t be ter­ri­ble either, right?

 

 

Jo Ever­shed

Jo is the CEO and co-founder of Caul­dron and Gorilla. Her mission is to provide behav­iour­al sci­en­tists with the tools needed to improve the scale and impact of the evi­dence-based inter­ven­tions that benefit society.