Practice Exercise
Interpretation
The last step in testing our hypothesis is to offer an interpretation. When interpreting results, we always go back to our original question and examine the graph with that question in mind.
We thought that disrupting circadian rhythms might influence performance and that this effect might vary based on the difficulty of the test. It appears from the group means graphed above that performance was lowest for those taking a difficult test in the morning and an easy test in the afternoon. As our subjects were taking the test at other than the regularly scheduled (possibly preferred) time, we might assume that those taking the test in the morning are "night owls" and those taking the test in the morning are "larks or morning people". If that is the case, "night owls" do more poorly with difficult tests in the morning when they might be very tired; "larks" do more poorly in the afternoon on easy tests when they are winding down. The easy test might be most affected because it does not require vigilance as so the fatigue factor kicks in. As you can see, interpretations are very speculative.
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