Research Study: Acoustic Noise and Reading Comprehension

A cognitive psychologist investigated whether the presence of low-frequency acoustic background noise affects reading comprehension. Two separate, independent groups of undergraduate students were recruited:

• Group 1: 20 students who read a passage of text in a completely silent room.
• Group 2: 20 different students who read the same passage in a room with a continuous low-frequency background hum.

At the end of the session, each participant's comprehension was assessed using a standardized subjective evaluation scale from 1 to 10 (yielding ordinal data).

The psychologist wants to use an inferential statistical test to determine if there is a significant difference in comprehension ratings between the two groups.