When people learn a new task, their performance usually improves when they are tested the next day, but only if they get at least 6 hours of sleep (Stickgold, Whidbee, Schirmer, Patel, & Hobson, 2000). The following data demonstrate this phenomenon. The participants learned a visual discrimination task on one day, and then were tested on the task the following day. Half of the participants were allowed to have at least 6 hours of sleep and the other half were kept awake all night. Is there a significant difference between the two conditions? Use a two-tailed test with α = .05.
Performance Scores
6 Hours of Sleep .............. No Sleep
n = 14 ............................ n = 14
M = 72 .......................... M = 65
SS = 932 ...................... SS = 706