Component 2: Moray (Cognitive) Flashcards
What is Moray’s study about?
Auditory Attention
What is the background to Moray’s study into auditory attention?
- Broadbent argued that humans cope with the flood of available information by selectively attending to only some of the information and ‘tune out’ the rest.
- Selective attention - people are presented with two or more simulataneous ‘messages’ and are instructed to process and respond to one of them
- Divided attention - this is a dual task technique in which people are asked to attend and respond to both/all messages.
- Cherry’s method of shadowing found participants who shadowed a message presented to one ear were ignorant of the content simulataneously presented to the other ear.
What was the research method of Moray’s study into auditory attention?
laboratory experiment
In all tasks, participants had to match the two messages so they were subjectively equal.
Who were the sample in experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
unknown number of undergraduates
What was the procedure of experiment 1 in Moray’s study into auditoy attention?
- Before each experiment, participants were given four passages of prose to shadow for practice. All the passages were recorded by a male speaker.
- A list of 7 words was repeatedly presnted (35 times) to the right ear (rejected) whilst they shadowed a prose story presented to the left ear.
- Particpants were asked to report all the content they could remember from the rejected message (list of words)
- They were given a 30 second rest before being given a recognition test.
- The recognition test was a list of 21 words, 7 from the prose, 7 from the list and 7 from neither.
What were the results of experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
- The difference between words recalled from the rejected message compared to the verbal message was significant at the 1 percent level. Participants recalled significantly less words from the rejected message. These findings support the findings of Cherry.
Who were the sample and what were the two conditions in experiment 2 of Moray’s study into auditory attention?
12 participants, 6 in each condition as it was an independant measures design. One group of particpants had instructions with their name, the other had instructions with no name.
What was the procedure of experiment 2 in Moray’s study into auditory attention?
- Participants shadowed 10 short passages of light fiction played to their right ear whilst another prose passage was played to the rejected left ear. They were told to try not to listen to the rejected message.
- Shadowed right ear: at the beginning of each passage, there were instructions (1) listen to your right ear (2) listen to your right ear you will receieve instructions to change ears. This kind of message set expectations for further messages.
- Rejected left ear: In the middle of six of the passages, there were ‘interpolated’ messages played to the rejected ear. Three of these were ‘affective’ messages that contained to participants name. The other three would have messages such as ‘change to your other ear’
- Participants responses were tape recorded and later analysed.
What were the results of experiment 2 of Moray’s study into auditory attention?
Particpants responded to more of the affective messages (name) presented to the rejected ear than the non-affective messages in the shadowed ear.
Who were the partipants and what were the conditions of the two groups in experiment 3 of Moray’s study into auditory attention?
28 participants - 2 groups of 14. Group 1 receieved direct instructions and the other group receieved no instruction. (independant measures design)
What was the procedure of experiment 3 of Moray’s study into auditory attention?
- This experiment was to see if instruction compared to no instruction would alter the chances of material in the rejected messages being recalled. This is because in experiment 2 they were given a warning at tyhe start of the passage. Moray thought this warning may have increased the chances of the participant hearing the rejected message.
participant was provided no instruction and were told that they would be asked - Participants were asked to shadow one of two simultaneous dichotic messages (i.e. two messages were played one to each ear)
- Digits were interpolated/inserted towards the end of the messages. These were sometimes present in both messages, or just one message, or neither message. The position of the numbers was randomly varied.
- Group 1 were told they would be asked questions about the shadowed content. Group 2 were told to remember all the digits they could.
What were the results of Moray’s study into auditory attention?
There was no significant difference between the number of digits recalled by either group of participants.
What were the conclusions of Moray’s study into auditory attention?
- In a situation where a partcipant directs his attention to a message from one ear and rejects a message from another ear, almost none of the verbal content of the rejected message can penetrate the block set up.
- A short list of simple words presented as the rejected message shows no trace of being remembered even when presented many times.
- Subjectivley important message such as a person’s name can penetrate the block, thus a person will hear instructions if they are presented with their name as part of the rejected message.
- While perhaps not impossible, it is very difficult to make neutral material important enough to break through the block.
