Core Studies - Cognitive Psychology - Moray's Study Flashcards
Moray Background structure
- What is selective attention
- Breifly explain the work of Broadbent and the need for selective attention
- Explain the experimental testing of selective attention by Cherry and the cocktail party effect
- Explain that Moray was inspired by Cherry to replicate his study and expand on it
Moray Background Model Answer
Selective attention is when an individual is presented with two or more simultaneous messages and processes and responds to one by blocking and rejecting the other. This is measured through dichotic listening tasks. Broadbent investigated the aviation industry, raising awareness of the importance of air traffic controllers being able to attend to important messages selectively whilst rejecting others. Cherry was interested in conducting experiments on this topic. He created dichotic listening tasks by asking participants to listen to two different messages, one in each ear, and shadow one of them, which in turn sets up a block to the rejected message. Cherry found that very little could be remembered from the rejected message. Moray was keen to replicate Cherry’s work and extend our knowledge of selective attention and dichotic listening.
Shadowed/ Attended message definition
Message followed and repeated out loud
Rejected/ Unattended Message
Message not followed (blocked out)
Dichotic Listening definition
Listening to two different stimuli at the same time through headphones and having to follow (shadow) one and reject another
Selective Attention definition
Presented with 2 different stimuli and have to process and respond to one and reject the other
Affective Cue definition
Something with meaning to you, e.g, name
Materials
Brenell Mark IV sterephonic tape recorder modified with 2 amplifiers
Aim of Experiment 1
To investigate the amount of information recognised in the rejected message
Aim of Eperiment 2
To investigate the effect of hearing one’s own name in the rejected message
Aim of experiment 3
To investigate the effect of instructions to identify a specific target in the rejected message
Procedure in experiment 1
- Repeat aloud (shadow) a passage of prose which was the attended message
- Given a short list of words in their other ear, which was repeated 35 times (rejected message)
- After 30 seconds, p’s given a list of words and must identify the words they heard
Procedure in experiment 2
- 2 peices of light fiction, one in each ear
- Both contained an instruction at the start to listen in their right ear
- Within the passages, 3 had affective instructions, 3 had non affective instructions and 3 had no instructions
Procedure of experimemt 3
- P’s complete a dichotic listening task
- Some in one condition are given instructions to listen out for digits in the rejected message at the start, and the others in another condition are not told thin
Finding for experiment 1
- Number of words correctly recognised (mean out of 7)
- SHADOWED: 4.9
- REJECTED: 1.9