Core Studies - Cognitive Psychology - Simons And Chabris Study Flashcards
Inattentional blindness definition
When attention id diverted to another object or task and observers often fail to perceive an unexpected object even if it appears at fixation
Aim 1
To find out whether events that are particularly unusual are ore likely to be detected
Aim 2
To investigate the effect of difficulty on inattentional attention
Aim 3
To investigate the effect of the unusual superimposition and the transparency of characters in the videos used by Neisser
Research method
Lab experiments using an independent measures design
Number of conditions
16
Dependant variable
The number of participants in each of the 16 conditions who noticed the unexpected event
Unexpected events
- Gorilla walking across screen
- Woman with an umbrella walking across the screen
Examples of standardisation
- Same actors recorded on the same day in the same location
- Each video showed 2 teams, one wearing white shirts and another wearing black shirts
- Players in the videos passed the ball in a standard order
- Each video lasted 75 seconds
Sample
- 228 participants in total
- Undergraduate students
Sampling method used to gather participants
- Volunteer sampling
- some without payment, some offered large candy bar or were paid a single fee
How many p’s had their data discarded
36
What materials were used
4 video tapes at 75 seconds long each, each tape showed 2 teams of 3 players, one wearing black and one wearing white.
Procedure
- 21 experimenters tested participants and carried out a written protocol so ensure standardisation.
- Participants were told which task they had to complete and which team they had to pay attention to.
- P’s in easy condition were asked to keep a mental note of all the passes their team made
- P’s in hard condition were asked to keep a mental note of the number of aerial passes and the number of bounced passes that their team made
- After the video that
immediately wrote down their counts and were asked additional questions.
What are some examples of the surprise questions
- While you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual about the video?
- Did you notice anything other than the 6 players?
- Did you see a gorilla [woman carrying an umbrella] walk across the screen?
What happened if p’s answered yes to the surprise questions
They were asked to provide details to control for lying that accompanies social desirability bias
Why was the data from 36 participants discarded
- They admitted to having heard of inattentional blindness
- They recorded losing count of the passes
- Passes were incompletely or inaccurately recorded
- Answers could not be clearly interpreted
- Participant’s total pass count was more than three standard deviations away from the mean of the other participants in the condition
What was the Key Finding
Across all conditions 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to notice the unexpected event
What was the finding relating to Aim 1
More participants noticed the umbrella woman (65%) than the gorilla (44%)
What was the finding relating to Aim 2
More participants noticed the unexpected event in the easy condition (64%) than in the hard condition (45%)
What was the finding relating to Aim 3
Participants were more likely to notice the unexpected event in the opaque condition (67%) compared to the transparent condition (42%)
What was the finding for the controlled observation
Only 50% noticed the unexpected event
Conclusions
- Observers are more likely to notice unexpected events if these events are visually similar to the events that they are paying attention to
- The degree of inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the primary task, and is more likely when the primary task is hard
- Inattentional blindness occurs more frequently in cases of superimposition as opposed to live action, but it is still a feature of both
- Objects can pass through the spatial areas of the attentional focus and still not be ‘seen’ if they are not specifically being attended to
Conclusion relating to Aim 1
Observers are more likely to notice unexpected events if these events are visually similar to the events that they are paying attention to
Conclusion relating to Aim 2
The degree of inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the primary task, and is more likely when the primary task is hard
Conclusion relating to Aim 3
Inattentional blindness occurs more frequently in cases of superimposition as opposed to live action, but it is still a feature of both
Link to Key Theme
The study shows that situational variables impact our visual attention and can cause inattentional blindness
Link to Area
We input information around us such as the video of basketball players in the study. We then process this information as a result of experiences which in this case was the difficulty of the primary task when counting the number of basket ball passes. This therefore results in the behavioural output of inattentional blindness under certain conditions
