Subjective Questions

The thing with running college students as subjects is that I expect them to be reasonably logical, so when this turns out to not be the case, it’s rather a shock. I’ve had a lot of subjects ask me – rather worriedly – thanks to my snazzy American accent, whether the experiment was going to be conducted in English or in French. Yes, quite obviously, I’ve come to a French lab, I’ve spoken to you entirely in French, and I’ve said nothing about an English-speaking requirement in order to TRICK you into participating in an experiment in English! MWAHAHAHAH!

In the experiment I just finished running, I needed to give participants further instructions in between Part I and Part II. The structure of this experiment was very straightforward – name colors for a bunch of trials, and then a screen pops up that says, “Felicitations! Vous avez terminé avec cette phase de l’expérience.” To alert them to this fact, when they began, I told them about this screen and to let me know when they see it. Apparently, as a shockingly high number of subjects just plowed on through this pause, many of their thought processes ran along these lines: “Let’s see. I was naming colors, but now suddenly there aren’t any new stimuli! And that nice experimentrice told me I should let her know when something happens, but I can’t quite remember what that trigger event was. Oh well. I suppose I should press some buttons on this computer to move on to the next stage of this experiment, even though it doesn’t say to do so!”

But the weirdest subject I’ve ever encountered came into the ERP lab yesterday while I was in the midst of running someone else. (This was not so dire as the current subject was in the separate testing room and she came into the control room, where I was.) While setting up the subject that was then mid-experiment, I had discovered that the EEG system had fallen apart even more than we’d all previously thought (as there are now 4 and potentially 5 electrodes that simply don’t work at all), and so I’d decided to cancel the next few scheduled subjects in hopes of the new system arriving sometime this millennium. I had been just on my way out of the lab to call my next appointment to cancel when this girl showed up, claiming to be this subject.

I was pretty sure it wasn’t her because I remembered the next subject was male, but as she insisted that she was indeed scheduled for the ERP experiment, I assumed I’d just remembered wrong and apologized profusely before telling her I had to cancel because the system simply wasn’t working. Would it be ok if we rescheduled for next week, perhaps?

To this, she responded that she’d like to try the experiment anyway.

Sorry, I rather patiently explained again, it’s just not working. I can’t run you now.

Well, I’d like to try, she replied. And then pointing at the room from whence the current subject’s voice was emitting, she asked, Is there someone in there now?

Yes, I said, I have a subject now who’s finishing up. It was during his run that I realized the system was malfunctioning, which, again, is why I can’t run you today. I’m really sorry, but let’s reschedule, ok?

Then she proposed that she go in and do the experiment along with the guy currently running, who was almost finished, with a broken system.

No, I said. For one thing, it’s an individual experiment. But the system is broken. I can’t run you today at all. It doesn’t work. I can take your number and reschedule if you’d like to come back some other time.

She still wasn’t leaving, and we’d been standing in the control room, whisperingly bargaining over my broken experiment for nearly 10 minutes. Nothing if not determined, she changed tactics and again pointing at the testing room, asked if there was a computer in there.

Very confused, I replied there was. I don’t know; it seemed like she was about to ask if she could borrow it to send an email or something.

But no, she just again asked whether there was someone else in the testing room and whether she could do his experiment instead of mine, using said computer.

Somehow I finally managed to get her out of there, after she left her number with me because it was better than some other number she thought I had. I don’t think I’ll be calling to reschedule; I’ve got plenty of other potential subjects, thanks.

Friends, Frenchmen, and Countrymen, lend me your eyes

Dear devoted fans, I most sincerely beg your pardon for being such a delinquent at posting. Diligent updates are officially recommencing. (By the way, I’m happily back in Marseille after 3 weeks home. It was wonderful to see as many of you as I did.)

In the elapsed time since my last writing, I have stimuli-ed, subject-ed, and analyzed an entire experiment. (More on specifics in future, more technical posts. Though is it bad form to write about un-official, un-solidified, and un-published but potentially publishable results on a forum such as this?)

I ran my subjects in Aix-en-Provence, a nearby city that wrote the definition of “quaint French town”. It’s small. It’s bursting with cafes. Three halves of three universities are located there, so it’s overflowing with hip, young Frenchmen and women. It’s upscale and slightly pretentious, with a completely effortless air of doing so. There are fountains and roundabouts and lots of sunshine, and it’s of course significantly more expensive than Marseille.

I was testing subjects in Aix because, even though the sciences part of the Université de Provence is in Marseille, the intro psych classes happen in Aix. Unsurprisingly, running French subjects is just like running American subjects, except that discussions about microphone calibration and how they’re doing the task wrong are a bit more difficult. Some subjects arrive bored to pieces, making it clear beyond all doubt that they’re only there because it’s a class requirement and the faster the experiment is over the better, good data be damned. Others actually, ya know, care, which is nice since they want to be psychologists, and are brimming over with enthusiasm and want to know all about the research and what it’s testing and my hypotheses.

Getting the subjects set up involved explaining to them what to do, in French. (Though a lot of them trotted out one solid English phrase, a favorite being “Nice to meet you.”)

Most introductory conversations ran exactly like this:
Me: Bonjour, bienvenue a l’éxperience! Ici est le microphone. Je suis presque prête.
Subject: Ah! Vous n’êtes pas française, non? (Most phrased the question this way, though one girl asked me “Tu est quoi?” = “What are you?” My response was “humaine”, which I don’t think she got.)
Me: Je suis Americaine.
Subject: Ooh, chouette! J’ai un ami/cousin/voisin qui a voyagé/etudié/habité à Miami/New York/San Franciso.

After the obligatory mention of their connection to the US, most of them proceeded to tell me I have a cool accent. What do you know? Apparently my verbal maceration of French is exotic and interesting. My favorite quote came from a guy selling calendars in the hallway of my apartment (I have no idea what he was doing there) who informed me “Vous avez un accent très, très joli!” (NB: This linguistic flattery did not convince me to buy a calendar.)

It seems obvious, but it’s something that never occurred to me before living here. In the US, I felt rather trite. Everyone is American. I felt like there wasn’t much interesting character or history behind it. But here, amazingly enough, everyone is French, and now I’m the odd one out. Suddenly being American got a lot more intriguing and patriotism-inducing.

Chouette!