Evaluating a Research Article

Evaluating a Research Article
Name
Institution
Lecturer
Date of Submission
Evaluating a research article
What the Author Said
The study’s hypothesis
The central question addressed by the article is the extent to which young Black men have been associated with threat in regards to the way they capture the attention.
The procedures used by the author used to test the hypothesis
The author carried out two studies and, therefore, employed two procedures for hypothesis testing.
Study 1
This study used the dot-probe task that was programmed by use of Direct RT software package on the Dell PC computers. The following sequences constituted each trial: (i) display of a fixation point for 1–3 seconds; (ii) display of two faces at 6 inch of either side of the fixation point for 33- Milliseconds; (iii) replacement of the faces with masks for 420- Milliseconds; and (iv) appearance of a small gray dot at the center of the location of previous appearance of one of the two faces. The dot did remain on the screen up to that point when the participant responded to indicate the location of the dot.
Study 2
The participants’ mean log-transformed dot-detection latencies were first subjected to a two-way ANOVA to examine the predictions. To examine the selective attention of participants more carefully, the researcher worked out the scores of pro-Black attentional bias. Apart from threat, the researcher checked to see whether the faces did look artificial or odd because eye-gaze manipulation could also influence attention.
The major findings of the study
The main outcome of this research is that the White perceivers discriminately attend to the faces of the young Black men, a group stereotypically linked to threat and danger.
Major...