Cognitive - Moray Flashcards
What was the background?
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
What is dichotic listening?
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.
What is shadowing?
Focus their attention on one message, participants were asked repeat out loud what they could hear in one ear
What is affective instructions?
An instruction which is meaningful (e.g. preceded by their name.)
What was the aim?
Detest Cherry’s findings more rigourously
What was the apparatus used?
Brenell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder and headphones
What was the pre-test?
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.
What was the sample in experiment one?
undergraduate students of both genders from Oxford University
What was the procedure for experiment one?
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.
What was the main number of recognise words in the seven words taken from the shadow the passage?
4.9
What was the main number of recognise words in the seven words taken from the list in the rejected message?
1.9
What was the main number of recognise words in the seven similar words that appeared in neither passage?
2.6
What was the conclusions for experiment one?
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
Aim for experiment two
Find out if an effective Q would break the inattentional barrier
What was the sample for experiment two?
12 undergraduate students from Oxford university of both genders
What was the IV for experiment two?
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
what was the DV for experiment two?
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
Procedure for experiment two
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
Which passages were affective instruction?
3 7 and 10
Which passages were non- affective instructions
1 5 and 8
What did each participant to do?
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.
In the affective instructions, how many times did the instruction get presented in the ‘rejected’ passage?
39
In the affective instructions, how many times did the instruction in the ‘rejected’ passage was heard?
20
In the non-affective instructions, how many times did the instruction get presented in the ‘rejected’ passage?
36
In the non-affective instructions, how many times did the instruction in the ‘rejected’ passage was heard?
4
What were the conclusions from experiment two?
The use of a participant’s own name broke the inattentional barrier
what was the effect of being given a warning at the start of the passage to expect instructions to change ears?
There was an increase in the main frequency of those who had instructions in the rejected message
How did the second experiment lead towards the third experiment?
Moray was interested whether warnings could break the inattention barrier
What was the aim for experiment 3?
whether instructions prior to the task help break the inattentional barrier
What was the sample use in experiment 3?
28 undergraduate of both genders from Oxford University (split into two groups of 14)
What was the design of experiment 3?
independent measures
What was the IVs in experiment 3?
instructions given either:
Told they’d be asked about the shadowed message
told remember as many other digits as possible
What was the DV in experiment 3?
Number of digits heard in rejected message
What was the procedure of experiment 3?
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
What was the results from experiment 3?
No significant difference
What were the conclusions from experiment 3?
Numbers are not able to break the intentional barrier in the same way that the participants own name can
Overall conclusion is full three experiments
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
Ethics upheld
Consent – had instructions – no stress of task
Debrief at end
Ethics broken
Slight deception
Is there study applicable only to the cultures in which the research was carried out, look at the findings apply elsewhere?
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
Internal Reliability - What are the procedures standardised and replicable?
highly controlled lab experiment – highly replicable – use the same equipment and the same volume
External Reliability - What is the sample large enough to suggest a consistent effect?
The samples was rather small – perhaps can’t suggest a consistent affect
External (population) Validity - How representative of the wider population of the participants in the study?
Participants were similar.
Also sample was only university students – they may have higher attention than the general population as they use it daily
External (construct) Validity - How did/didn’t the experiments resemble real life situations?
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
