Date of Award
2004
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Open Access)
Department
Colby College. Psychology Dept.
Advisor(s)
Clare Bates Congdon
Second Advisor
Joseph Atkins
Abstract
The goal of this project was to utilize the tools of machine learning to evaluate the data obtained through experiments in psychology. Advanced pattern finding algorithms are an effective approach to analyzing large sets of data, from any domain of science. Consequently, we have a psychological question and hypothesis, and a separate machine learning technique to assess these claims. The realm of psychology that I focused on is visual cognition, and how an individual's knowledge affects how they see the world. This alteration of visual data is a part of perception -when the brain enhances the data coming in from the eyes. We devised an experiment that exploits these knowledge-based changes, and allows trials of a task for visual acuity. Incorrect answers can then be judged to see if the participant's knowledge of the stimuli appeared to have affected their ability to answer correctly. These answers are combined with other traits of the stimulus to create a dataset that was analyzed by machine learning tools.
Keywords
Machine learning, Cognition, Psychology -- Research -- Methodology, Psychology -- Research -- Statistical methods
Recommended Citation
Place, Skyler, "Visual expectations: using machine learning to identify patterns in psychological data" (2004). Honors Theses. Paper 196.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/196
Copyright
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