cognitive area year 2

Question 1

what is the classic study of year 2 cognitive area?

Answer 1

moray (1959)

Question 2

what is the contemporary study of the year 2 cognitive area?

Answer 2

Simon and Chabris (1999)

Question 3

what is attention?

Answer 3

attention is the cognitive process that enables us to select some information to conecnetrate on while rejecting other information

Question 4

what is a dichotic listening task?

Answer 4

2 different messages are played at the same time, one to each ear

the participant is asked to shadow (repeat) one of the messages, and told to reject (ignore) the other message

Question 5

what is the Cocktail Party Effect?

Answer 5

the ability to tune in to one voice or conversation, while tuning other conversations out

Question 6

what was the aim of Moray’s first experiment?

Answer 6

they wanted to investigate whether focusing on a specific piece of auditory information means you don’t process anything from another message

Question 7

what was the sample of Moray’s first experiment?

Answer 7

undergraduate students and research workers from both sexes

Question 8

what was the design of Moray Experiment 1?

Answer 8

repeated measures

Question 9

what were the IVs of Moray Experiment 1?

Answer 9

dichotic listening test and the recognition test

Question 10

what was the DV of Moray Experiment 1?

Answer 10

number of words recognised in the rejected message

Question 11

what was the procedure of Moray Experiment 1?

Answer 11

Moray used a dichotic listening task. Ps had to shadow their right ear (called the attended message) in which a passage of fiction was read. Simultaneously in their left ear, they had a word list being repeated 35 times, although they were asked to ignore this (called the rejected message)

ps then completed a word recognition test. the test had 21 words. Participants had to identify the words they recognised

7 of the words were taken from the fictional passage, 7 were from the rejected message and 7 words weren’t in either message

Question 12

mean number of words recognised from the passage in moray 1?

Answer 12

4.9

Question 13

mean number of words identified from the rejected (unattended) message from the word list in moray 1?

Answer 13

1.9

Question 13

mean number of words identified which were not in either the attended or unattended sources in moray 1?

Answer 13

2.6

Question 14

conclusion of moray 1?

Answer 14

selective attention does happen. the results supported what Colin Cherry said– unattended information isn’t processed and therefore isn’t recognised

Question 15

apparatus used in moray 1?

Answer 15

Brenell Mark IV tape recorder with twin amplifiers which had two independent outputs– one to each ear in the headphones

Question 16

controls used in moray 1?

Answer 16

asked ps if loudness matched in each ear

loudness - 60Db

ps had 4 ‘shadowing’ practice trials

speech was about 150 words per minute

all recordings were a male speaker

Question 17

what was the aim of Moray 2?

Answer 17

aimed to investigate whether meaningful information such as a person’s name could penetrate the block on the rejected message and divert attention

aimed to test this by giving people instructions with or without their name

Question 18

what was the sample of moray 2?

Answer 18

12 ps, undergraduates, research workers, of both sexes

Question 19

IV of moray 2?

Answer 19

affective cue or no affective cue

Question 20

design of moray 2?

Answer 20

repeated measures

Question 21

DV of Moray 2?

Answer 21

number of times they hear instruction

Question 22

procedure of moray 2?

Answer 22

participants had to shadow 10 short passages of light fiction.

before the tasks began, participants were told ‘Listen to your right ear. You will receive instructions to change ears’.

In 3 of the rejected passages, the participant’s name was in the instruction, eg ‘John Smith, change to your other ear’. Participant’s attention was measured by the participants successfully hearing the instruction and then shadowing the message in the ear that they were instructed to change to

Question 23

how many passages were heard with the participant’s name (affective cue)

Answer 23

20

Question 24

how many passages without the participant’s name (no affective cue)

Answer 24

4

Question 25

what was the conclusion of experiment 2 in moray?

Answer 25

showed that something meaningful like your name is enough to break through the block that selective attention creates.

Question 26

what was the aim of moray 3

Answer 26

they wondered if having a warning meant they heard the instructions more in exp2. so, exp3 investigated whether having a warning about what you have to remember helps

Question 26

what was the sample of moray 3?

Answer 26

28
14 in each group
undergrads and research workers of both sexes

Question 27

procedure of moray 3?

Answer 27

there were 2 conditions. one condition of 14 ps did not have a specific instruction before the task. they were just generally told that they would be later asked questions about the content of the rejected message

the other condition was given a warning to remember digits presented in either the shadowed or rejected message

there were random digits sometimes in both messages (left and right ear) and sometimes only in one

Question 28

moray 3 findings?

Answer 28

no significant difference found between the 2 conditions at 5%

having the warning doesn’t help

Question 29

conclusion of moray 3?

Answer 29

the numbers weren’t important enough to get through the ‘block’

Question 30

overall conclusions for moray?

Answer 30

selective attention is a phenomenon which does occur, much of the information you are not paying attention to ‘gets lost’

when busy attending to something important information can break through and grab your attention

Question 31

validity of moray?

Answer 31

controls = high internal validity

artificial nature of dichotic listening task = low ecological validity

lacks population validity because ps were undergrad students and research workers, and so thus had higher cognitive abilities. therefore, it is possible that this sample would outperform the general population

Question 32

reliability of moray?

Answer 32

high levels of reliability due to controls and standardised procedures

Question 33

is moray ethnocentric?

Answer 33

cognitive processes such as selective attention depend on the physiognomy of the brain and therefore is not ethnocentric. this is because attention is a species-specific behaviour and is not affected by culture

nevertheless, the findings may only reflect English speakers’ attentional processes

Question 34

is moray scientific?

Answer 34

one way it is scientific is the use of controls, which allows for replication. replication is a key feature of a science

Question 35

how is moray useful?

Answer 35

it has provided empirical evidence for Colin Cherry’s Cocktail Party Effect

Question 36

what is inattentional blindnes?

Answer 36

the failure to see an event/object because you are so focused on other elements of what you can see. the missed information reaches our brain, but is missed

Question 37

what was neisser’s basketball study in 1975? (background to simon and chabris)

Answer 37

ps watched a video of a basketball game and were told to press a key whenever they saw a pass made by either the white or the black team (they were told to attend to one of the two)

during the video, a woman carrying an open umbrella walked across the screen for 4 seconds. Only 6 out of 28 participants reported seeing the woman

but this study was low in ecological validity because the basketball game had been recorded separately for the white and black team and the umbrella lady, and was then layered on to each other. the video was therefore transparent

Question 38

what was the overall aim of Simon and Chabris’ study?

Answer 38

wanted to confirm inattentional blindness in a more realisitc setting and show that it is sustained inattentional blindness

Question 39

sample of simon and chabris?

Answer 39

21 experimenters gathered data from 228 consenting volunteers who were mostly undergrads at Harvard University.

they were offered payment or a ‘large candy bar’

only 192 ps’ data was used

Question 40

procedure of simon and chabris?

Answer 40

ps were asked to watch 1 video clip (75 secs long) of a basketball game. The researcher told them to count the number of ball passes for either the white team or the black team. this was dependent on which condition they were in

during the video slip (and whilst the ps were attending to the white/black team) an unexpected event would occur between 44 and 48 seconds into the video. This would occur for a duration of 5 seconds

ps would have either a tall woman with an open umbrella who would walk across the screen from left to right OR a short woman in a gorilla costume who would also walk across the screen from left to right

once the ps had finished watching the video, they had to write down the number of passes they had counted and were then asked 3 questions: did you notice anything unusual? did you notice anything other than the 6 players? did you see a gorilla/woman carrying an umbrella walk across the screen?

if they said yes to any of these questions, they were asked to provide details and were not asked any remaining questions.

they were then debriefed which included rewatching the video on request

Question 41

what were the conditions in simon and chabris?

Answer 41

there were a total of 16 conditions. Participants completed 1 condition which meant the study used an independent measures design

Question 42

what were the independent variables in simon and chabris?

Answer 42

easy vs hard

white team vs black team

transparent vs opaque

gorilla vs umbrella

Question 43

what did it mean if ps were in the easy condition in simon and chabris?

Answer 43

they had to mentally count the number of passes made by the team

Question 44

what did it mean if ps were in the ‘hard’ condition?

Answer 44

they had to mentally count the number of bounce passes and aerial passes separately

Question 45

how did the video look if ps were watching a transparent video in s + c?

Answer 45

the black team, white team and unexpected event were filmed separately then layered on top of each other so it was transparent

Question 46

how did the video look in s and c if ps were watching an opaque video?

Answer 46

a black and white team filmed playing basketball with the unexpected event

Question 47

findings of simon and chabris regarding overall inattentional blindness for all 192 ps?

Answer 47

46% of people did not see the unexpected event

54% of people did see the unexpected event

Question 48

findings of simon and chabris regarding easy vs hard condition?

Answer 48

64% of people saw the event in the easy condition

45% of people saw the event in the hard condition