Cognitive - Moray

Question 1

What was the background?

Answer 1

Cocktail party effect – put up an inattentional barrier - ignore people you are not talking to – be broken by someone saying your name – these were Cherry’s findings

Question 2

What is dichotic listening?

Answer 2

Participants listened to a modified tape recorder that allowed for a pair of headphones to play different outputs to each other. They had to try to pay attention to one of the messages.

Question 3

What is shadowing?

Answer 3

Focus their attention on one message, participants were asked repeat out loud what they could hear in one ear

Question 4

What is affective instructions?

Answer 4

An instruction which is meaningful (e.g. preceded by their name.)

Question 5

What was the aim?

Answer 5

Detest Cherry’s findings more rigourously

Question 6

What was the apparatus used?

Answer 6

Brenell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder and headphones

Question 7

What was the pre-test?

Answer 7

before each experiment the subjects were given for passages of prose to shadow for practice – these were approximately 60 dB with a speech rate of 150 words per minute. They all spoken by one male.

Question 8

What was the sample in experiment one?

Answer 8

undergraduate students of both genders from Oxford University

Question 9

What was the procedure for experiment one?

Answer 9

participants had to shadow a piece of prose that they could hear in one ear – in the other ear a list of simple words was repeated 35 times (this is the rejected message).
The end of the task participants completed a recognition task. After, they were shown a list of 21 words.
Unknown to them the words were split into three categories and participants looked at the list of 21 words and chose which words they recognised.

Question 10

What was the main number of recognise words in the seven words taken from the shadow the passage?

Answer 10

4.9

Question 11

What was the main number of recognise words in the seven words taken from the list in the rejected message?

Answer 11

1.9

Question 12

What was the main number of recognise words in the seven similar words that appeared in neither passage?

Answer 12

2.6

Question 13

What was the conclusions for experiment one?

Answer 13

Participants and much more able to recognise words from the shadow passage.
Almost none of the words from the rejected message I able to break the inattentional barrier

Question 14

Aim for experiment two

Answer 14

Find out if an effective Q would break the inattentional barrier

Question 15

What was the sample for experiment two?

Answer 15

12 undergraduate students from Oxford university of both genders

Question 16

What was the IV for experiment two?

Answer 16

Whether in instruction within a rejected passage:
Was preceded by the participants name – it was affective
was not proceeded by the participants name – was not effective

Question 17

what was the DV for experiment two?

Answer 17

Where the participants were more likely to hear instruction in the messages are not paying attention to if it is preceded by their name. This was operationalise by whether they reported hearing the instruction or whether they actually follow the instruction

Question 18

Procedure for experiment two

Answer 18

two passages of light reading were heard one in either E.

6 passages that the participant had contained an instruction at the start and then another instruction within them.

Both passages were read in a steady monotone at a pace of about 130 words per minute by single male voice

Question 19

Which passages were affective instruction?

Answer 19

3 7 and 10

Question 20

Which passages were non- affective instructions

Answer 20

1 5 and 8

Question 21

What did each participant to do?

Answer 21

they each shadowed 10 passages of light fiction.
They each experience the same 10 passages in the same order, making this a repeated measures design.
They were told that the aim was for them to make as a few errors as possible in the shadowing of the passages.

Question 22

In the affective instructions, how many times did the instruction get presented in the ‘rejected’ passage?

Answer 22

39

Question 23

In the affective instructions, how many times did the instruction in the ‘rejected’ passage was heard?

Answer 23

20

Question 24

In the non-affective instructions, how many times did the instruction get presented in the ‘rejected’ passage?

Answer 24

36

Question 25

In the non-affective instructions, how many times did the instruction in the ‘rejected’ passage was heard?

Answer 25

4

Question 26

What were the conclusions from experiment two?

Answer 26

The use of a participant’s own name broke the inattentional barrier

Question 27

what was the effect of being given a warning at the start of the passage to expect instructions to change ears?

Answer 27

There was an increase in the main frequency of those who had instructions in the rejected message

Question 28

How did the second experiment lead towards the third experiment?

Answer 28

Moray was interested whether warnings could break the inattention barrier

Question 29

What was the aim for experiment 3?

Answer 29

whether instructions prior to the task help break the inattentional barrier

Question 30

What was the sample use in experiment 3?

Answer 30

28 undergraduate of both genders from Oxford University (split into two groups of 14)

Question 31

What was the design of experiment 3?

Answer 31

independent measures

Question 32

What was the IVs in experiment 3?

Answer 32

instructions given either:
Told they’d be asked about the shadowed message
told remember as many other digits as possible

Question 33

What was the DV in experiment 3?

Answer 33

Number of digits heard in rejected message

Question 34

What was the procedure of experiment 3?

Answer 34

participants were presented with a dichotic listening task and had to shadow one of them.

In these messages however spoken numbers were said out loud towards the end of the message. (Digits were chosen as these would be fairly neutral).

The digits were sometimes presented in both ears or only in one ear all in the control, not in either ear

Question 35

What was the results from experiment 3?

Answer 35

No significant difference

Question 36

What were the conclusions from experiment 3?

Answer 36

Numbers are not able to break the intentional barrier in the same way that the participants own name can

Question 37

Overall conclusion is full three experiments

Answer 37

almost none of the verbal content from a rejected message penetrate a block when attending to another message.

A short list of simple words cannot be remembered even when repeated several times.

Important messages like names can penetrate the barrier.

It’s difficult to make neutral materials e.g. digits important enough to break the inattention barrier

Question 38

Ethics upheld

Answer 38

Consent – had instructions – no stress of task

Debrief at end

Question 39

Ethics broken

Answer 39

Slight deception

Question 40

Is there study applicable only to the cultures in which the research was carried out, look at the findings apply elsewhere?

Answer 40

Although attention could be argued to be a universal behaviour study so far is not ethnocentric because it is not vary due to participants all being the same age and from the same place.

Also language could cause an issue

Question 41

Internal Reliability - What are the procedures standardised and replicable?

Answer 41

highly controlled lab experiment – highly replicable – use the same equipment and the same volume

Question 42

External Reliability - What is the sample large enough to suggest a consistent effect?

Answer 42

The samples was rather small – perhaps can’t suggest a consistent affect

Question 43

External (population) Validity - How representative of the wider population of the participants in the study?

Answer 43

Participants were similar.

Also sample was only university students – they may have higher attention than the general population as they use it daily

Question 44

External (construct) Validity - How did/didn’t the experiments resemble real life situations?

Answer 44

Use of headphones meant no background noise was involved – not real life.
However it’s normal to be surrounded by many conversations at once and focus on one