Abe Davis
Senior Seminar Log Page

(After an error that my disk quota was full, I lost my original log page. I will try to restore it as best
as I can.)

9/20/04:

I've decided on my general topic: It will be Computer-aided Psychological Experimentation. I will find a
focus once I've delved deeper into this subject.

10/01/04:

I've begun work on my log page and my senior seminar webpage. I will include a gantt chart in the near future.

10/05/04:

I've found very interesting material thusfar. There have been experiments done previously that probe the
human mind on a cognitive level. I have read about mental rotation experiments, depth-perception, lexical
semantics, etc. I think I am nearing my focus.

10/16/04:

I have been putting a good deal of time looking at lexical priming and semantics. This interests me much more
than the rest, although I do enjoy a visual test.

10/24/04:

I have decided my focus will be on garden-path sentences. They are fascinating because they are easy to
develop but they show how humans think and parse sentences as they go. I'm excited about this new step.

11/01/04:

I've begun work on my application, which will test participants on how much time they spend on each word.
This is not as useful as having actual eye-tracking equipment but this approach will work just fine I believe.
My program will be written in C++ and will allow for real-time input response and accurate recording.

11/06/04: 

I'm back on track now and ready for action.

11/30/04:

I've updated my Gantt Chart.

12/05/04:

I've finished my program. It now randomly picks 15 sentences, some garden-path and some non-garden-path,
and captures the time in milliseconds between words. The user can press spacebar whenever they are ready
and the application will show the results after each sentence with the amount of time next to each word.
Tomorrow and Tuesday I have participants who will run my experiment and I will calculate the results by
examining the data.

12/12/04:

My final presentation went well, my final paper is done. I have survived Senior Sem!