cognitive area year 2 Flashcards
what is the classic study of year 2 cognitive area?
moray (1959)
what is the contemporary study of the year 2 cognitive area?
Simon and Chabris (1999)
what is attention?
attention is the cognitive process that enables us to select some information to conecnetrate on while rejecting other information
what is a dichotic listening task?
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
what is the Cocktail Party Effect?
the ability to tune in to one voice or conversation, while tuning other conversations out
what was the aim of Moray’s first experiment?
they wanted to investigate whether focusing on a specific piece of auditory information means you don’t process anything from another message
what was the sample of Moray’s first experiment?
undergraduate students and research workers from both sexes
what was the design of Moray Experiment 1?
repeated measures
what were the IVs of Moray Experiment 1?
dichotic listening test and the recognition test
what was the DV of Moray Experiment 1?
number of words recognised in the rejected message
what was the procedure of Moray Experiment 1?
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
mean number of words recognised from the passage in moray 1?
4.9
mean number of words identified from the rejected (unattended) message from the word list in moray 1?
1.9
mean number of words identified which were not in either the attended or unattended sources in moray 1?
2.6
conclusion of moray 1?
selective attention does happen. the results supported what Colin Cherry said– unattended information isn’t processed and therefore isn’t recognised
apparatus used in moray 1?
Brenell Mark IV tape recorder with twin amplifiers which had two independent outputs– one to each ear in the headphones
controls used in moray 1?
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
what was the aim of Moray 2?
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
what was the sample of moray 2?
12 ps, undergraduates, research workers, of both sexes
IV of moray 2?
affective cue or no affective cue
design of moray 2?
repeated measures
DV of Moray 2?
number of times they hear instruction
procedure of moray 2?
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
how many passages were heard with the participant’s name (affective cue)
20
how many passages without the participant’s name (no affective cue)
4
what was the conclusion of experiment 2 in moray?
showed that something meaningful like your name is enough to break through the block that selective attention creates.
what was the aim of moray 3
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
what was the sample of moray 3?
28
14 in each group
undergrads and research workers of both sexes
procedure of moray 3?
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
moray 3 findings?
no significant difference found between the 2 conditions at 5%
having the warning doesn’t help
conclusion of moray 3?
the numbers weren’t important enough to get through the ‘block’
overall conclusions for moray?
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
validity of moray?
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
reliability of moray?
high levels of reliability due to controls and standardised procedures
is moray ethnocentric?
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
is moray scientific?
one way it is scientific is the use of controls, which allows for replication. replication is a key feature of a science
how is moray useful?
it has provided empirical evidence for Colin Cherry’s Cocktail Party Effect
what is inattentional blindnes?
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
what was neisser’s basketball study in 1975? (background to simon and chabris)
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
what was the overall aim of Simon and Chabris’ study?
wanted to confirm inattentional blindness in a more realisitc setting and show that it is sustained inattentional blindness
sample of simon and chabris?
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
procedure of simon and chabris?
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
what were the conditions in simon and chabris?
there were a total of 16 conditions. Participants completed 1 condition which meant the study used an independent measures design
what were the independent variables in simon and chabris?
easy vs hard
white team vs black team
transparent vs opaque
gorilla vs umbrella
what did it mean if ps were in the easy condition in simon and chabris?
they had to mentally count the number of passes made by the team
what did it mean if ps were in the ‘hard’ condition?
they had to mentally count the number of bounce passes and aerial passes separately
how did the video look if ps were watching a transparent video in s + c?
the black team, white team and unexpected event were filmed separately then layered on top of each other so it was transparent
how did the video look in s and c if ps were watching an opaque video?
a black and white team filmed playing basketball with the unexpected event
findings of simon and chabris regarding overall inattentional blindness for all 192 ps?
46% of people did not see the unexpected event
54% of people did see the unexpected event
findings of simon and chabris regarding easy vs hard condition?
64% of people saw the event in the easy condition
45% of people saw the event in the hard condition
