Design an experiment to test the following hypothesis: "Learning of nonsense syllables is facilitated, in adults, by ingestion of caffeine."
In the early morning, when sleepy adults arrive at work (or at class), their mental alertness may be improved by having a cup of coffee or a cola drink. Using the learning of non-sense syllables (see Ebbinghaus, in the Memory chapter of the textbook) as an indicator of mental alertness, propose an experiment that would use 20 college students as subjects to test the hypothesis. Describe the procedure that you would use, and define all the relevant issues, including the independent and dependent variables, the operational definitions, how the subjects would be obtained and assigned to conditions, and how the data would be organized. Describe what the summary data might look like, and how it would affect your decision about whether or not the hypothesis was supported by the data. Remember, this is a research proposal, so don't "pretend" you have already collected the data.
This solution assists in designing an experiment to test the following hypothesis: "Learning of nonsense syllables is facilitated, in adults, by ingestion of caffeine."