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I wanted to test several ideas... I wanted to repeat the lab starting with case 3 then 2 then 1 to see if my results in each case got better, some got better, some got worse, or all got worse.

My baseline averages:

Case 1: 232 milliseconds
Case 2: 245 milliseconds
Case 3: 484.5 milliseconds
Case 4: 724.8 milliseconds

In the case of the class, case 4 could be discounted because there was a loophole in the program that made it easy for us to sidestep actually thinking about negating.

When I retested myself I stared with case 3:
Case 3: 510.3
Case 2: 402.2
Case 1: 327
So I was doing worse on each study than I had done before, going from 1 to 3. Then I did Case 4, just for the heck of a "challenge" (which was exciting because I was getting bored...) I got: 579.3. Which is much better than 724.8, which I got the first time.

I wanted to see if I could do better on this case 3 to case 1 test if I did it again after a nice break during which i ate a Nature's Valley granola bar. Results:

Case 3: 459
Case 2: 291
Case 1: 171

I did better on this one than I did on the first "3 to 1" case, and I actually even did better ("better" means less time, by the way) on case 3 and case 1 than I did on my baseline test. A conclusion I can make from this is that boredom and/or distracting hunger made me react more slowly in the first 3-1 case.

Another idea I wanted to explore was just with case 2. I was wondering about anticipation. I started doing it and was doing terribly, and I felt I had to live up to  my baseline standard of 245. The pressure was on, so I started to put the simple directions in my head: "click dark" and that helped a bit. So I was back to being "good" at this-- but then I got about 6 whites in a row, but then I clicked. Then a black came up, and I got 615 milliseconds-- I was way more careful and felt ashamed because I had anticipated the black before... This happened a bunch of times. I'd get on a role with the blacks, getting low times, then there would be a lot of whites... and then I would have a very slow reaction for clicking the black.