Tierney Waiters

This project was presented at Kennesaw State University’s 11th annual Analytics Day. The data was analyzed using statistical analysis with SAS Studio. I referred to Caye Clack with any analytical issues and to Tim Martin with any conceptual misunderstandings I had. I analyzed data from experiments investigating behavioral and physiological responses to a stimulus. The physiological responses were measured using electrodes placed on a participant's scalp, and with 38 participants each response was averaged over 400 trials. The objective for the participant was to view a screen with a collection of dots and indicate whether the dots were moving left or right. Most psychophysiologists focus on one component of an evoked response potential and its relationship with behaviors. The focus of my project was to find relationships among participants demographics, behavioral responses, and physiological responses. As there were many interesting outputs from this analysis, the one that I had made prominent during my presentation was the output from a Mood's median test, which showed that there were no significant differences in the average physiological response for the different racial categories. Both parametric and non-parametric tests showed there were no significant differences in either reaction time or proportion correct for the different racial groups. What I found interesting is that African Americans, Asians, Caucasians, and Hispanics showed no statistical difference among their physiological responses. Even though there are physical differences among different ethnicities, based off of the participants within this trial, there were no significant differences among the physiological responses of their brain. Obviously, more research should be conducted to expand on these findings.