Fossil Story Essay Example for Free

Fossil Story Essay Northeastern Illinois has a great deal of geological history hidden beneath the surface. If you just take a trip to the Larson Quarry or even Pit 11 you can find some interesting rock formations as well as fossils in them. But, if you cannot get to these areas, this paper can tell you what you can find in 5 different locations in Northeastern Illinois. We will be looking at Larson Quarry, Thornton Quarry, Mazon River, Pit 11, and the Glacial Drift which is at Palos Hills and throughout the surface of the Chicago area). The first stop is the Larson Quarry. This is located near DeKalb, Illinois. The specific coordinates are 42? N, 88? 35’ W at 920 feet. This site contains specimens from 450 million years ago which include trilobites like Flexicalymene, brachiopods like platystropia, rafnesquina, leptaena, the horn coral streptelasma, an unnamed bivalve, bryozoans, various crinoid stem parts, the cephalopod endoceras, and the gastropods cyclonema and malcurites. The rock types and formations that were found around these fossils were Cincinnatian Maquoketa Shale and Galena Dolomite. â€Å"The Maquoketa shale, which contains seams of argillaceous dolomite†¦and ranges from highly to slightly weathered, with the highly weathered portions having the consistency of a stiff clay and are extremely fissile† (Preber). These fossils were preserved by replacement as well as mold and cast. The Mazon River, which is near Morris, Illinois is located at 41? 20’N, 88? 30’W at 525 feet. This site had fossils from 290 million years ago and included seed ferns like alethopteris and neuropteris, true fern Pecopteris, horsetail rush parts calamites (trunk), and annularia (leaf whorl), lycopod tree (club moss) parts and bark lepidodendron, and leaf lepidophylites. The rock types were shale and sandstone as well as coal and the formation was Francis Creek. The Illinois State Museum writes in an article about how Francis Creek formation is formed: â€Å"Much of the area that we now call Illinois was a mixture of swampy lowlands and shallow marine bays. From the northeast flowed at least one major river system. The river(s) built large deltas through the low swamps and into the shallow bays. The mud that the river(s) carried was deposited in these deltas and bays. This mud turned into a rock called the Francis Creek Shale†. The preservation type was impressions in concretions. Next is Pit 11 which is the Mazonia/Briadwaood State Fish and Wildlife area at 41? 15’N, 88? 15’W at 590 feet. These specimens were found from 290 million years ago. The fossils include the same basic plants as the Mazon River. They also include jellyfish like the essexella, the shrimp belotelson, clams like edmontia and aviculopectin, an unnamed marine annelid worm, a possible fish fossil coprolite, the infamous Tully Monster: tullymonstrum, and the echinoderm sea cucumber holothurian. The rock types that held these fossils were shale and sandstone, as well as coal. These were in a Francis Creek formation. These fossils were preserved by impressions in concretions. It becomes quite apparent that there are certain biases in how and what fossils are preserved. Some species, notably Pecopteris unita, are found with fertile structures nearly half of the time while others like the more common true fern, Pecopteris acadica, are rarely seen with fertile structures being preserved at all† (Mazon Creek†¦). This tells us how these fossils were formed. Thornton Quarry, at coordinates 41? 35’ N, 87? 35’ W at 590 to 250 feet, is located on the south side of Chicago. This Quarry was formed 420 million years ago and includes fossils such as the trilobite calymene, brachiopod pentamerus, corals like favosite and halysites, an unnamed crinoid stem and the cephalopod moorecoceras. The rock types that were here were limestone-dolomite in Niagaran Racine Dolomite with fossils in mold and cast. â€Å"The most famous reef unearthed in the Chicago area is the coral reef†¦Debris from the growing reef began to be deposited and cemented. The reefs contained sea lilies, animals resembling horseshoe crabs, and ancient ancestors of squids and octopuses up to ten feet long. The ashy, gray-white limestone mined from the Thornton Reef contains the fossils of these animals† (Herweck). The reason that there are multiple types of coral is because this area was at the bottom of the Silurian Sea and molded well into the limestone. Lastly, we visit Palos Hills which includes the Glacial Drift. This area was from ~15,000 years ago and showed deposits of unconsolidated pebbles, sand, silt ad clay which contain mixed rocks of 400 million to 1 billion years old at 41? 41’N, 87? 50’ W at 772 feet. The fossils found here are mammoth or mastodon remains that are preserved as unaltered hard parts. There are also mixed marine fossils including crinoid stems, brachiopods, corals like hexagonaria (Petosky Stone) and trilobite parts, where were preserved as mold and cast r replacement. The glacial till include striated rocks composed of a mixture of many types including sedimentary (limestone/dolomite), igneous (granite, basalt) and metamorphic (gneiss). The formation was Valparaiso Moraine. â€Å"At this time, glacial ice covered the entire Chicago region†¦. the active ice sheet retreated into the Lake Michigan basin, although stagnant, melting ice remained behind. The ice then rapidly re-advanced to the†¦Valparaiso moraine in the western Chicago region† (Grimm). The glaciers that were in Chicago made a big impact on picking up rocks and sand and dirt from other regions and bringing it into the area, which is a reason why you may find interesting things in the area and that rocks age from 400 million to 1 billion years ago. The areas that we can find an assortment of fossils and rock formations are abundant in Illinois and have a wide variety of ages. From this summary, you can see what type of rock are around Northeastern Illinois and what type of animals, plants, and rocks were around from different periods and what type of environment they must have lived in.

Comparison Of Parmenides And Heraclitus Philosophy Essay

Comparison Of Parmenides And Heraclitus Philosophy Essay At the first sight Heraclitus and Parmenides uphold the opposite principles, with their doctrines being in dramatic contrast, while the former affirms change, becoming and cyclic recurrence of things and the latter denies their existence. For Heraclitus true being is circular and transforms into not-being, life turns into death and the change that occurs is eternal and cyclical, it truly is (Graham). While for Parmenides true being is motionless and static, it does not change behind the appearance of change. Both philosophers indirectly abolished death by stamping becoming with the seal of being (McFarlane). But, actually, Parmenides and Heraclitus asserted the One. They merely applied to different approaches to teach the same things. Heraclitus affirmed that diverse appearances change, therefore opposites exist in interconnection, depend on each other and are in unity. He conceived a unity of opposites and accepted becoming, while Parmenides refuted opposites, accentuated being and claimed: Being is ungenerated and indestructible, whole, of one kind and unwavering and complete. Nor was it, nor will it be, since now it is, all together, one, continuous. Hereby, different appearances of reality do not truly change, because they so not exist. Parmenides considered that change is impossible, as everything is staying the same, being one single static element, but his opponent, Heraclitus, on the contrary, affirmed that everything is in constant flux, it is changing and his statement everything flows and you cannot step into one and the same river twice have become phrases. He argued that one cannot step twice into the same river, nor touch mortal substance twice in the same condition. By the speed of change, it scatters, and gathers again, so the river will be different every time it is regarded (Graham). Claiming that motion is change, Heraclitus became known for his philosophy of universal flux and fire that, according to him, was the basic material of the world, as well as his controversial theory of coinciding opposites. The philosopher is considered to be independent of a definite school, as this heritage is multilayered and comprises elements of material monism and scientific cosmology, metaphysics and rationalism, but he definitely was a revolutionary whose works despite they were profoundly studied remain controversial and challenging to interpret (Graham). The Greek philosopher presents uses the inductive method by means of which he wants the others to understand the world, he habitually presents a simple situation giving a concrete image, hereby he enables readers to educate themselves. To convey his beliefs more fruitfully Heraclitus uses such stylistic devices as chiasmus and alliteration in his speeches in defense of the theory. The philosopher diligently reiterates that his readers will not understand his message, but he promises to try to explain them everything he is able to see to: distinguish each thing according to its nature and show how it is (Graham). The form in which Heraclitus presents his work is essential for understanding its essence, he uses the technique of verbal complexity and syntactical ambiguity, Charles Kahn, for instance, characterizes his style with two words linguistic density and resonance. With his style similar to Hesoid and the Orphics Parmenides is supposed to have written only one work entitled On Nature that is unfortunately preserved only in fragments, though it originally extended to about eight hundred verses. Parmenides broke the prose tradition by writing it in hexameter verse and was widely quoted by the later authors who kept it for the future generations. The philosopher speaks in support of his principles in the Proem that has a number of interpretation variants and is regarded by contemporary scholars in the aspect of the strict monism, logical-dialectics, meta-principle etc. The work deals with the goddess who must reveal the two ways to Parmenides and he should chose the better one. The two ways present his former error and the truth that becomes clear to him. The work consists of two parts, the first one concerns the truth or the true reality and the second deals with the world of illusion, that is the world of senses and opinions. In the fragment 8 t he goddess utters the philosophers principle of the universal statics by claiming: As yet a single tale of a way remains, that it is; and along this path markers are there very many, that What Is isà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ whole and uniform, and still and perfect à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ with the past or the future being meaningless for the reason. Parmenides believed that the reality is and must be in the strictest sense and any alternation in it is not possible. Remarkably, in Parmenidess Proem the goddess criticizes ordinary men for being guided with their senses. Unlike Heraclitus, the thinker judges merely by reason and never trusts the senses. In the human perception the world is nothing but a deceitful show (Palmer). Several other fragments found indicate that Parmenides touched upon the themes of physiology and human thought in his work and claimed that our own selves are deceptive and accentuated subjectivity of individual perception. While Heraclitus also emphasizing human affairs is supposed to be the first humanist, who proves the blindness of humans in his doctrine. Though he believed that humans are frequently incapable of understanding, let alone wisdom, he does not deny the importance of senses and says: The things of which there is sight, hearing, experience, I prefer. The philosopher connected accumulation of wisdom with senses and memory rather than with knowledge, and the latter does not necessarily teach humans understanding. So, in accordance with Heraclitus, people do not learn by experience, as they cannot process the information they perceive, however, humans still exercise self-knowledge and sound thinking. To comprehend his insights one should catch their complexity and discover the unity of the elements (Graham). According to Guthrie, for Parmenides there was no cosmology, as he presented the proofs of the impossibility of the opposites existence. Conceiving the plurality of normal beliefs, the philosopher, however, makes mention of cosmology principles in the fragments 8 and 9 where he discusses light and night, as well as the stars, sun, moon and the earth itself. Commenting on his cosmology, Guthrie remarked that for he philosophy it remains just a dialectical device used for viewing the picture of the physical and sensible world (Palmer). The evidence of that is found in the goddesss words when she characterizes cosmology as: the beliefs of mortals. Contrary to Parmenides, Heraclitus being a cosmologist mentions in his texts the kosmos order describing the world around us, that he identifies with fire. Fire is described in his doctrine as the origin of all, all things are merely manifestations of fire and it is a symbol of change because it is never the same, without change, according to him, there will be no world. The elements are in cosmic balance and undergo the eternal transformations with no single element gaining predominance (Graham). Heraclitus says in his work: The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fireburst. Unlike Parmenides, who proved the impossibility of the existence of opposites in his doctrine, Heraclitus entails the coincidence of opposites and discusses their interconnection, saying: Sea is the purest and most polluted water: for fish drinkable and healthy, for men undrinkable and harmful. According to Herclitus, contrary qualities are included into the same thing, he reasons that th e same thing is living and dead at the same time, it is waking and sleeping, young and old (Graham). However, the philosopher accentuates that though the opposites are correlative, they are never identical to each other. But the coincidence of opposites results in contradictions that cannot be avoided by the philosopher. Barnes, for instance, blames the scholar for violating the principles of logic and making knowledge an impossible thing (Graham). Analyzing the philosophers beliefs as those advocating the radical change, we see that Heraclitus flux is a case of the unity of opposites described in his doctrine. But contemporary analysts claim, he cannot be both a believer in radical flux and a monist, so he is definitely a pluralist who urges self-control and moderation and regards the soul as the moral center of human existence (Graham). Despising passion, he admires the power received through self-mastery and self-purification: It is not good for men to get all that they wish to g et. Whatever our desire wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul. Parmenides also discusses the behavior of the humans, is interested in the human thought and reasoning, though his discourse on that matter concerns cosmology. The interconnection becomes clearer as he discusses a wide range of natural phenomena. Being a rigid monist, Heraclitus believed in war, he even praised it calling it a guiding force in the world and claiming: War is father of all and king of all; without the conflict we would have only lifeless uniformity. The philosopher as well as Parmenides speaks of God, however, Hercalitus means neither the Greek Gods nor a personal entity. He considers that God exists in every soul and in every single thing in the world. Due to his fire and flux theory he explains the presence of God in everything on earth. While Parmenides suggests that What Is is a god, and what must be must be or exist and must be what it is, not only temporally but also spatially (Palmer). Though one thinks that the universe is static, eternal and motionless, denies change and becoming, another one affirms them and opens new perspectives for the Greek though by introducing his theory of flux and fire, both have influenced the philosophic tradition and challenged the naÃÆ' ¯ve theories of their predecessors by developing more sophisticated ones. Parmenides, being a metaphysical monist, and Heraclitus, rather independent of any ancient theories, a material monist, a scientific cosmologist and a rationalist, have much more in common than it used to be generally recognized. Moreover, Heraclitus is supposed to inspire Parmenides for developing a contrasting theory, so that they could be seen as representatives advocating constant flux and universal stasis.

Speech :: essays research papers

Hello ladies and gentlemen my name is BLANK and I am here because I am a risk taker. Have you ever heard the expression â€Å"if they jumped off a bridge would you too?† My answer was a nervous â€Å"yes† to a free-fall jump off a bridge. This decision was a life changing one. It was a hot and humid day and my friends and I were out cycling for a few hours to fill in time. After a while we reached a foot bridge that was suspended over water. We all stopped before it. Suddenly my best friend turned around and said â€Å"I dare you to jump off the bridge.† Not to say anything, but I have a huge fear of heights. I have had it since when I went for a short, noisy and scary flight in a light aircraft when I was five. I have problems just going up in an elevator let alone jumping off a bridge. I could see other people jumping off and screaming while they fell towards the water. The noise from the screams was making it worse for me as it was causing my stomach to tighten and making me feel sick. So I decided to take the easy way out of this situation without embarrassing myself in front of my friends. â€Å"Yes, ok† I said nervously. â€Å"But, only if you jump first.† I added. He said â€Å"fine† then got off his bike and put it down and said to look after it. He then made his way to the side of the bridge and stood up on the rail. He waved to us and then he just jumped. No fear or hesitation. He just jumped! I was amazed and then I hear a splash. Oh no! So much for the easy way out of this situation. I had assumed that he would decline and it would be left at that. We watched him swim back to the shore and then he went out of sight. I knew it was my turn next. A few minutes later he reappeared triumphantly and announced that it was my turn to jump now that he had completed his end of the dare. With the spotlight on me and the pressure building as my friends cheered me on I decided that there was no way out and that it was time to face my fears and conquer them.

Obtaining a Competitive Advantage Through Cost Leadership and Different

This assignment will cover how a business can gain a competitive advantage over similar businesses in the same market using sources such as cost advantage and differentiation. What will also be discussed is the value chain model made by Porter, and this assignment will explain what the model was actually designed for. Furthermore, it will be explained how a business can use methods of competitive advantage through various stages of Porter’s Value Chain in order to help it maintain and increase the competitiveness of the business, and this will be done through assessing the operations of the business and locating exactly where any competitive advantage can be gained. Lastly, Porter’s value chain features 9 activities which can each be identified as being either a primary or support activity and what will then be explained will be how these primary and support activities can add value to a business, and whether or not support activities can be considered as being any more or any less important than a primary activity. It is suggested by many that there are two ways for a business to gain competitive advantage; this is done through either cost advantage or differentiation. Porter (2004, p.64) claims that cost advantage is when a â€Å"firm achieves a lower cumulative cost of performing value activities than its competitors†. A good example of this would be ASDA within the food retailer industry. ASDA (ASDA beats its full year sales and profit plan, 2009), known for their â€Å"commitment to everyday low prices†, are very much a cost-leading competitor in the food retailer industry and they stated that they beat their â€Å"full year sales and profit plan† for the fourth consecutive quarter in 2009 by introducing a â€Å"significant cost reduction prog... ...l Group (2008) Annual Report 2008: Our key strengths. [Online] Available at: http://www.homeretailgroup.com/ar/2008/review/keystrengths/p2.shtml (Accessed: 19/11/2011) Johnson, G., Scholes, K. (2002) Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text and Cases. 6th edn. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. McGeary, R. (2011) Anatomy of Market Research [Online] Available at: http://www.remnet.com/porter.html (Accessed: 14/11/2011) Millar, V., Porter, M. (1985) ‘How Information Gives You Competitive Advantage’, Harvard Business Review pp. 18-36. [Online] Available at: http://zaphod.mindlab.umd.edu/docSeminar/pdfs/Porter85.pdf (Accessed: 17/11/2011) Needle, D. (2000) Business in Context: An introduction to business and its environment. Third edition. London: Thomson Learning Porter, M. (2004) Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. New York: FREE PRESS.

Why Physical Education is Important Essay -- Teaching Teachers Learnin

Why Physical Education is Important Education can be defined as the systematic development of the mind, capabilities, and/or character through instruction or study. This is also the purpose of education. This purpose is met through the curriculum taught, how the curriculum is taught, and the nature of the curriculum taught. Physical education is just one aspect that should be taught to students. The purpose of education is for a student to develop character, mental abilities, and physical abilities. This is why school and education are so important, because without these skills one cannot live up to his/her full potential or even function in society. My purpose as a teacher is to give students opportunities to succeed and not to give grades. My purposes are to make students aware of their capabilities and by discovering these capabilities develop a sense of self. The students do this by pushing themselves or trying to their fullest extent. By trying his/her hardest they will know their limitations. These areas are the purpose of education. Physical education is an important area in schools today. If taught correctly, it can develop physical and mental skills as well as develop a sense of self. By participating in physical activity, a student’s skill will naturally increase to the demands placed upon it. If a student never tries then their skill will never grow. The mental skills one develops in a physical education class are proble...

Fundamental Rights of Education

1. Purpose of the Report The purpose of this report is to describe and then provide an evaluation of each stage of the programme in order to give recommendations for follow up activities and further professional development for Master Trainers and teachers. 2. Introduction 2. 1. Three organisations, The British Council (BC), UNICEF and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Tamil Nadu collaborated on an ambitious programme to develop the skills of English language teachers in government primary schools. The project aimed to improve the English language teaching methodology of over 40,000 Class 5 teachers across the state. To this end, 600 Block Resource Teacher Educators (BRTEs), 60 District Institution of Education and Training (DIET) Teacher Trainers and 240 standard V teachers were to be trained and they would in turn cascade training to the standard V teachers at district and block levels. 2. 2. Following a needs analysis carried out in November 2008 by two British Council Senior Training Consultants (STCs) a proposal was made to SSA Tamil Nadu. The proposal detailed the results of the needs analysis and took into account discussions made between the three partner organisations regarding the needs of the primary school teachers working across the state. . 3. The British Council was invited by Tamil Nadu SSA to provide the following outputs: †¢ diagnostic assessment of up to 450 teachers with the purpose of determining the level of spoken English amongst teachers in primary schools in Tamil Nadu. †¢ needs assessment for development of training materials, a bench mark in order to measure p rogress and used as a selection tool for entry onto the programme. †¢ design and deliver 2 x 30 hour courses for 900 Master Trainers, which would be cascaded to 40,000 standard V primary English teachers in Tamil Nadu. organise monitoring and evaluation of the Master Trainer programme and subsequent cascade programmes. 2. 4. The cascade training model is generally applied in large scale training programmes where sheer numbers and geographical reach prohibit direct training. In India, where a single state may have as many as 150,000 teachers, it enables large numbers of teachers to be trained. We recognize that the model has limitations, critics have pointed out that as training flows through the layers a certain amount of quality andeducation is must

A variation of the Stroop effect Essay

Abstract The effects of completing a task which requires the use of both automatic and controlled processes was investigated through a two-process experiment designed around a variation of the Stroop effect. Previous research found that, when performing certain tasks, response time is longer when an automatic process conflicts with a controlled process, in this instance reading interferes with naming the colour of ink a word is written in. These results reinforced a two-process theory of attention. In the current experiment, the nature of the words in which various colours of ink were printed was manipulated. The results further supported a two-process theory by showing that the nature of the words used did have a significant effect on response times. Introduction If we consciously perceived the vast amount of stimuli available in daily life our senses would go into overload. Our brains have a restricted capacity and we only have the brainpower to attend to a limited amount of information. The conscious cognitive process of selective attention protects us from being overwhelmed by all the sensory signals impinging on our receptors by allocating processing resources where necessary. The conscious processing of information over which we can exert control (controlled processing) requires mental effort, drawing on the limited processing resources available to us in varying degrees depending on the task at hand, and can be easily interrupted. This was the stance assumed by Kahneman (as cited in Edgar, 2007) who put forward a ‘limited-capacity’ theory suggesting a general-purpose hypothetical mental structure with an upper limit in the amount of information it can deal with at any one moment. The responsibility of this processor is to a nalyse incoming stimuli and integrating it with information already within the memory, thus implying some information cannot be processed. While this suggests the central processor divides its resource pool between competing ongoing tasks, there are instances where attention can be successfully divided under certain conditions. Through a succession  of experiments Schneider and Shiffrin (as cited in Edgar, 2007) made a distinction between controlled and what they termed ‘automatic’ processes. Such processes require little or no mental resources and occur without conscious awareness, enabling our limited resources to be directed elsewhere allowing for some tasks to be done at the same time as others, thus preceding to the development of two-process theories. While automatic processing offers speed and economy of effort is has a notable disadvantage in that it can interfere with the conscious processing of information; a phenomenon that demonstrates said drawback is that termed the ‘Stroop effect’ (as cited in Edgar, 2007), which looks at what happens when we need to attend two conflicting sign als. In an experiment participants were required to identify the colours that were used to spell out the names of other colours, as swiftly as possible (the Stroop condition). In the alternate condition, in which participants tended to execute their response with greater ease, colour-neutral words were used (e.g. rat, grand, bolt, etc.). It would seem that the ability to read forms an automatic response, which during the Stroop experiments interfered with the controlled process of naming the colour of the ink. Through a variation of the Stroop effect, the present experiment investigated further the idea that automatic processing interferes with the information a person is consciously trying to attend. Rather than using colour words (e.g. red, purple etc.) the experimental condition employed colour-related words (e.g. blood, plum etc.) printed in a colour that was incongruent with the word; the control condition contained colour-neutral words (e.g. ledge, grade etc.). The research hypothesis was that participants would take longer to complete the condition where the words were colour-related than the condition containing colour-neutral words. This is a one-tailed hypothesis. The null hypothesis was that there will be no difference in the times taken to complete the two conditions. Method Design A within-participants design was employed. The independent variable (IV) was a list of coloured words which consisted of two conditions. Condition 1 (the experimental condition) was manipulated to compose of colour-related words printed in a colour that was incongruent with the word. Condition 2 (the control condition) contained colour-neutral words. In both conditions the participant was required to say aloud the colour of the ink that each word was printed in. The dependant variable (DV) was the time taken to correctly identify the ink colour of each word within the colour-related word list. This was accurately measured to the nearest whole second by the researcher using a stopwatch. Controls were introduced to limit the effects of any possible confounding variables. To avoid possible practice effects of doing both conditions in the same order for each participant, the order in which the conditions were presented was counterbalanced. Data on odd-numbered rows of the complete data set (1, 3, 5, etc.) are from participants who did condition 1 then condition 2, whereas data on even-numbered rows (2, 4, 6, etc.) are from participants who did condition 2 then condition 1 (A copy of the complete data set can be found in Appendix 1). Each colour-related word was used five times within condition 1; to avoid causing a practice effect the number of colour-neutral words used in condition 2 was the same. The same number of words was used in both conditions (thirty). The words used in the two conditions were matched for length. The different coloured inks were exactly the same hue for both conditions and presented in the same order. The instructions given to participants in both conditions were identical. Participants Of the twenty participants that took part in this experiment, 10 were male and 10 female, aged between 18 and 69. Sixteen of these participants were recruited from personnel at The Open University, or their family members and friends. The remaining four were selected from associates of the experimenter who had no knowledge of the hypothesis or the specific research sphere; all were informed that they would be taking part in a cognitive psychological experiment involving lists of coloured words, the resulting data would be used in a report to gain university course credits and that they could withdraw at any time. Each individual signed a consent form thereby obtaining informed consent. Materials The stimuli presented in each condition (a replica of which can be found in Appendix 2) consisted of a sheet of A4 paper on which 30 words, placed in two columns, were written in various colours of ink (red, blue, green, yellow, orange and purple). In the experimental condition (condition 1) colour-related words were printed in a coloured ink that was incongruent with the word (e.g. the word ‘grass’ printed in each of the above colours excluding its natural association, green). The words used were blood, sky, grass, lemon, carrot, and plum, each word appearing five times in each of its incongruent colours. The control condition (condition 2) contained colour-neutral words (blame, ledge, grade, career, plan and sty). Each word began with the same letter as its corresponding colour-related word (e.g. ‘Blood’ and ‘Blame’) as well as being identical in the number of characters; each of the words appeared in the list five times. The words were presen ted in no specific pattern, but the same in both conditions. Participants’ response time for each condition was measured with a stopwatch and rounded to the nearest whole second. Results were recorded on a pre-prepared response sheet. Verbatim instructions were issued to each participant. Procedure Each participant was approached and asked if they would be willing to take part in an experiment that was investigating one aspect of cognitive psychology. They were informed of what participation would entail. If they agreed to take part, each participant signed a consent form (Appendix 3) and was reminded that they could withdraw at any time. The age, sex and order of conditions were then recorded on a pre-prepared response sheet before each participant was tested individually. The instructions for the experiment were read verbatim to each individual. They were told that they would be presented with two lists of words, one at a time, and that they should say out loud the colour of the ink that each word was written in as quickly as possible starting at the top left of the list working downwards and then proceed to the top of the right column. To ensure they understood what was being asked of them they were shown an example sheet; once the participant confirmed that they understood what was required of them, either condition 1 or 2 was placed face down in front of them (the order of presentation alternating between participants to avoid a possible confounding variable).  This information was also recorded on the response sheet. The paper was turned over and the stopwatch was started. When the task was complete, the time taken for each condition was recorded on the response sheet to the nearest second. The participant was then thanked, fully debriefed as to the aims of the experiment and given the opportunity to ask any questions they had. Results The research hypothesis in this experiment was that participants will take longer to complete the condition where the words were colour-related than the condition containing colour-neutral words. The time in which it took for each participant to complete the required task was measured for each condition to the nearest second. Discussion The results of the present experiment showed that it took longer to complete a task when it was required to attend to two conflicting signals at the same time indicating that automatic and controlled processes operate simultaneously. Response times in the condition where participants had to identify the colour of ink used for colour-related words were longer and therefore statistically significantly different from the condition where they had to identify colour-neutral word colours. This suggests that the process of reading interfered with participants’ ability to name the colour of ink each word was written in when the words were colour-related. Stroop (as cited in Edgar, 2007) similarly demonstrated some of the costs associated with an interaction between automatic and controlled processes through the stroop effect experiment; namely that people tended to find it more difficult to respond with the colour of the ink a word was written in if the word itself described a colour, as opposed to a colour-neutral word. Stroop used his findings as evidence for a two-process theory of attention, indicating that automatic processing interfered with the information the participants were consciously trying to attend (controlled processing). If it were so that a general-purpose central processor divided its limited resource pool between competing ongoing tasks, as suggested by Kahneman (as cited in Edgar, 2007) it could be expected that in the present experiment the response times for the two conditions would be similar in value as the participants would find neither condition more difficult than the other. However, this is not the case; on average participants did take longer to complete the experimental condition, therefore it can be assumed that they found it more difficult. This result implies that multiple pools of resources are present with regards to attention and that automatic and controlled processes operate concurrently. Numerous controls were put in place to ensure any possible confounding variables were at a minimum, however, there are factors that could contribute to these despite the practices put in place. Automatic processes can be influenced by individual strategies and so it may be that participants were able to exert extra control over their attention within the experiment. One method of doing this  would be to focus their attention on the initial letter of each word, with the aim of ignoring the word itself as much as possible, allowing for a greater available resource pool which can then be applied to the identification of ink colours. To combat this, the order in which participants completed each condition alternated, however this method has its limitations as it doesn’t guarantee the complete absence of a confounding variable. In conclusion, the results of the experiment reported here do support a two-process theory of attention. However, although the statistical results allowed for the rejection of the null hypothesis, it is possible that by performing the experiment on more than twenty participants, a greater difference in response times could be produced allowing for more solid support for the theory. Future studies conducted in this area should attempt to carry out experimental research on a larger sample of participants in order to strengthen the evidence and lessen the possibility of aforementioned confounding variables. References Edgar, G. (2007) Perception and attention. In D. Miell, A. Phoenix, & K. Thomas (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2nd ed., pp.3-50). Milton Keynes: The Open University.