Moray Flashcards
Key theme + area
Key theme - attention
Area - cognitive
background
- attention has a selective nature
- Cherry - cocktail party effect the phenomenon of being able to focus auditory attention on particular stimulus
while filtering out range of other stimuli, much the same way that a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.
KEY FINDING - in a dichotic listening test information from the unattended ear was not recalled at all.
aims
-The first experiment in this study aimed to test Cherry’s findings more rigorously
- The second and third experiments aimed to
investigate other factors that can affect attention in dichotic listening.
method of experiment 1
This used a repeated measures design.
This independent variables (IVs) were:
(i) the dichotic listening test
(ii) the recognition test
The dependent variable (DV) was: the number of words recognised correctly in the rejected message.
method of experiment 2
This used an repeated measures design.
The independent variable (IV) was: whether or not instructions were prefixed by the participant’s own name.
The dependent variable (DV) was: the number of affective instructions.
method of experiment 3
This also used an independent measures design.
The independent variables (IVs) were:
(i) whether digits were inserted into both messages or only one
(ii) whether participants had to answer questions about the shadowed message at the end of each passage or whether participants had to merely remember all the numbers s/he could.
The dependent variable (DV) was: the number of digits correctly reported.
sample
- Participants were undergraduates and research workers of both sexes.
- Participant numbers are not given for Experiment 1
- 12 participants took part in the experimental conditions in Experiment 2
- two groups of 14 participants were used in Experiment 3.
experiment 1
- short list of simple words repeatedly presented to one ppts ear while they shadowed a prose message presented to other ear
- word list repeated 35 times
- ppt then asked to report all he could of content of rejected message
- then given a recognition test using similar material, present in neither the list nor passage as control
- gap between end of shadowing and beginning of recognition test was approx 30 secs
experiment 2
- conducted to find out limits of efficiency of attentional block
- ppts allowed 10 short passages of light fiction
- told that their response would be recorded + that the object of experiment was for them to try score as few mistakes as possible
- some passages instructions were interpolated but in 2 instances ppts weren’t informed
- half of cases with instructions these were prefixed by ppts own name.
experiment 3
- 2 groups of 14 ppts shadowed one of 2 simultaneous dichotic messages
- some messages digits were interpolated towards the end of the message. these were sometimes present in both messages sometimes only one. position of numbers in message and relative to each other in the 2 messages were varied and controls with no numbers were also used, randomly inserted.
- 1 group of ppts told that it would be asked questions about content of shadow message at the end of each message. other group specifically instructed to remember all number they could
findings of experiment 1
recognition scores for words from shadowed and rejected messages ( mean number of works recognised)
- words presented in shadow message = 4.9/7
- words presented in rejected message = 1.9/7
- words presented for first time in recognition test = 2.6/7
this findings support those found by cherry
findings of experiment 2
- most ppts ignored instructions that were presented in passages they were shadowing and said they thought it was merely an attempt to distract them.
affective = - number of times presented = 39
- number of times heard = 20
non-affective = - number of times presented = 36
- number of times heard = 4
only 4/20 occasions in which name instructions were heard did ppts actually make change to other message
findings of experiment 3
difference between mean number of digits reported under 2 conditions of set were analysed and submitted to a t test.
in none of the cases was the difference significant even at the 5% level of confidence
conclusions
- In situation where ppt directs attention to
reception of message from one ear, and rejects message from other ear, almost none of verbal content of rejected message is able to penetrate block set up. - short list of simple words presented as rejected message shows no trace of being remembered even when presented many times.
- Subjectively ‘important’ messages, such as person’s own name, can penetrate the block: thus a person will hear instructions if presented with own name as part of rejected message.
- While perhaps not impossible, its very difficult to make ‘neutral’ material important enough to break through block set up in dichotic shadowing.
