Cognitive Studies Flashcards
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Theme
Memory-Eyewitness testimony
Grant et al (1998) Theme
Memory-Context Dependent Memory
Moray (1959)
Theme
Attention- Auditory Attention
Simon and Chabris (1999)
Theme
Attention-Visual Attention
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Background and Hypothesis
- Already known there was an effect of leading questions and inaccuracy of estimations (Air Force)
- Hypothesis: info received (in the form of a leading question) after an event would be integrated into a person’s memory.
Grant et al (1998)
Background, aims and hypothesis
Godden and Baddeley- experiment of recall of information from divers above/below water.
Aims: Investigate context dependent memory effects of recall and recognition. Look at tests and conclude as to whether study habits would affect performance due to mismatched environments.
Hypothesis: If no environment-context effects occur, then the environment studied in will have no significant difference in final testing performance.
Moray (1959)
Background
Previous study
2 types of attention
Aim
Cherry’s ‘cocktail party effect’ in response to your name.
Selective attention- Could be asked to focus on one thing. Could be as a result of a limited capacity processing system(overload).
Divided attention- multiple stimuli at the same time but one side of the information is commonly lost.
Aim: what kind of stimuli and situation, might lead to how some features of a ‘rejected’ message might be ignored and how some break though the attentional barrier.
Simon and Chabris (1999)
Theories
Visual attention Change blindness Inattentional blindness Superimposition effects Inattentional amnesia
Visual attention-eye records, but we don’t change our attention to it. Selective attention.
Change blindness- fail to notice large changes.
Inattentional blindness- when attention is diverted.
Superimposition effects- due to odd appearance.
Inattentional amnesia- event immediately forgotten.
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Sample
Opportunity sample from same uni
EX1: 45 American students
EX2: 150 American students
Grant et al (1998)
Sample
Opportunity sample
39 (associates of the 8 psychology students at the university)
17-56 year-olds
Moray (1959)
Sample
Undergrad and research workers at Cambridge University.
EX1:?
EX2:12
EX3: two groups of 14
Simon and Chabris (1999) Sample details (remember removal of some)
Self selected sample (for candy or money)
228 Harvard uni students
-192 observers over 16 conditions
-36 ruled out because they’d heard of the theory
+12 took part in controlled observation
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Design
Method
IV and DV
Lab Experiment (longitudinal for EX2)
Independent measures
IV: 1- verb (hit/smashed/collided/contacted/bumped)
2- smashed/hit /control
DV: 1-speed estimation (mph)
2-was there any broken glass?Grant et al (1998)
Design
Method
IV and DV
Lab/field experiment (snapshot) Independent measures (randomly assigned) IV: NOISY, NOISY NOISY, SILENT SILENT, NOISY SILENT, SILENT
DV: number of correct answers on each test.
Moray (1959) Designs IVs DVs Level of data
EX1: repeated measures. Shadowed message vs rejected message. No. of words recognised out of 21 word list. Ordinal
EX2: independent measures. Name with instruction (cue) or instruction on own. If instruction was heard-changed to shadowing the other ear. Nominal
EX3: (control) independent measures. Told they’d be asked questions at the end vs told to remember as many digits. Number of digits correctly recorded. Ordinal.
Simon and Chabris (1999) Design Method IVs DVs
Lab experiment
Independent measures
IV: 16 conditions in total [umbrella lady/gorilla, transparent/opaque, easy/hard task, following black/white team]
DV: unexpected event seen or noticed Did you notice anything unusual? Anything other than six players? Anyone else? Gorilla or umbrella woman?
Loftus and Palmer (1974) EX1
Materials-questionnaire
- Questionnaire after each clip.
- describe the accident and were given specific questions
- A critical question was embedded asking ‘About how fast were the cars going when they () each other?’
- The critical verb was either of the 5 critical verbs.
Grant et al (1998)
Method
- Standardised instructions. Read the text as if they were studying(could use highlighters etc to help).
- Told that they would be tested afterwards on the text. -They were told to ignore any noise.
- 2-minute break in-between to minimise recall from short-term memory.
- Questionnaire was given.
- They were then debriefed concerning the purpose of the experiment.
Simon and Chabris (1999)
Method
All tested individually and given informed consent before.
Instructions- told to watch either the black or white team and to keep a silent count of either the number of passes (easy task) or the number or bounce and aerial passes (hard task).
Questions after interviewing-
Asked to write down counts immediately. Then asked a series of surprise questions. (DV)
‘Had they previously participated in a similar experiment?’ if yes then results were discarded.
Loftus and Palmer (1974) EX2
Method
- 1-minute clip of a 4 second accident
- asked to describe what had been seen
- Embedded in the questions was the critical question used in the previous experiment.
A week later, the participants were `asked to return and given a questionnaire of 10 questions which included ‘Did you see any broken glass?’
Moray (1959) EX1 Told to do What was in each ear? How did they measure? Anything special about it?
- Reject the words in the left ear and told to shadow the passage heard in the right ear.
- A random list of words were said in the left.
- A passage from Alice in Wonderland was said in the right.
- list of 21 words and told to circle those that had been heard.
- Included those from the passage, from the words list and some words were not said into either ear.
Moray (1959) EX2 How many passages? How many had instructions embedded? How were these thens split?
- 10 passages read to them through headphones.
- Each passage had instructions at the start.
- 6 of the 10 passages had instructions within the rejected passage.
- 3 of those passages had non-affective cues “change to the other ear” and the other 3 had affective cues “John Smith change to the other ear”.
- The remaining 4 had no instructions in the rejected passage.
Moray (1959) EX3 Purpose? Had to do what? What was at the end? DV? Difference between the two groups?
- CONTROL.
- two simultaneous dichotic messages and had to shadow one.
- In some passages, spoken digits were said aloud towards the end of the message.
- The DV was the number of digits correctly reported.
- Group 1 were told they’d be asked questions about the message.
- Group 2 told specifically to remember the digits.
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Materials
Ex1: 7 film clips of different traffic accidents ranging from 5-30seconds. Different ordering.
Ex2: 1-minute film clip of a 4-second car accident.
Questionnaires used in both experiments.
Grant et al (1998)
Materials
- Headphones (noise from uni canteen)
- 2 page, 3 columns of text of psychoimmunology (interesting and understandable)
- Tests: 10-short answer + 16 multiple-choice.
Simon and Chabris (1999
Materials
Materials 75 second clip of two teams playing a ball game.
At 44-48 seconds, the woman with an umbrella or a person in a gorilla suit would walk between the game, in front of some of players from the left side of the camera to the right. This was presented on a TV monitor.
Moray (1959)
Materials and controls
Same passages/words list.
Volume matched each time.
Tape recorder was used which had two independent outputs.
Participants were given 4 trial shadowing tasks to ensure they could shadow messages.
Loudness 60db above hearing threshold.
One male speaker.
Speed was at 150 words per minute.
Loftus and Palmer (1969)
Results
Ex1:
Smashed:40.8mph
Contacted: 31.8
(the speeds of clips ranged from 20-40mph)
Ex2:
Smashed 16/50
Control 5/50
121/150 correctly reported seeing no broken glass.
Grant et al (1998)
Results
SILENT-SILENT-81%
NOISY-NOISY-79%
NOISY-SILENT-70%
SILENT-NOISY-67%
Moray (1959)
Results EX1
SHADOWED 4.9/7
Rejected 1.9/7
Random list 2.6/7 (schemas)
Moray (1959)
Results EX2
AFFECTIVE: 20/39=HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT
Non-affective 4/36
Moray (1959)
Results EX3
No significant difference between no of digits recalled.
Simon and Chabris (1999)
Results
Noticed?
What condition had 100%?
Compare event in relation to team colour?
192= 54% noticed 46% didn’t notice
100% of participants saw the umbrella lady when carrying out the easy task on the white team through the opaque video clip.
Gorilla seen by 58% of participants watching the black team.
Umbrella lady seen by 69% of participants when they were watching the white team.
Simon and Chabris (1999)
Conclusions
4 key ideas
Demonstrated inattentional blindness.
- Pay attention to something similar to focused task.
- Less likely to attend an event if it is unusual (idea of schemas).
- The more realistic= the more likely to pay attention.
- Easy task= easier to pay attention to other things.
We can choose what to attend to or reject using an attentional block.
Moray (1959)
Conclusions
One for each experiment
Ex1: We can divide attention. We reject information we are told to not pay attention to.
Ex2: Cues are ‘subjectively important’ and are more likely to be attended to.
Ex3: Numbers are not important enough to break your attentional block. Attention was not as a result of being told to pay attention to instructions at the start of Ex2.
Grant et al (1998)
Conclusions
Simple and apply to context/aim
Participants had higher test scored when studying and testing in matched conditions.
There was a context dependent effect for both kinds of test: since exams are in silence, it is beneficial to study in silence as performance will be increased/better.
Loftus and Palmer (1969)
Conclusions for both and consider factors
Ex1: leading questions can affect accuracy of memory.
- Response bias factors from the verb-effects what was remembered immediately.
- Memory representation altered of an event.
Ex2: leading questions altered a memory participant had of an event. Memory was determined by two factors.
- Own perception at the time
- External into supplied after the fact
