Moray Flashcards
What was the background to Moray’s study
Another piece of research found participants were shadowed a message presented to one ear ignored message in other ear
Cocktail party effect = ability to focus your listening attention to one person saying your name amongst a mixture of convos and background noises
Selective Attention = focusing on one thing while simultaneously ignoring irrelevant info also occurring
Divided Attention = concentrating on more than one thing eg. listening to two people at once
What was Moray’s aims
1) to see whether we create a ‘block’ on messages we are not focusing on
2) to see whether our attention can be shifted from something we are paying attention to an ignored message if we hear our name
Describe the samples in Morays study
1) Male and female undergraduate students and research workers. Opportunity sampling
2) 12 males and female undergraduate students or research workers
Opportunity sampling
3) Two groups of 14
What was the reseach method of moray’s study. Why?
Laboratory experiment
EXP 1
IV = (i)shadowed message (ii) rejected message
DV = no. of words recognised correctly from both messages
CONTROLS = both passages were played at the same volume with same male voice
EXP 2
IV = whether or not instructions to change ear called out their name or not
DV = number of affective vs non affective instructions responded to (more likely to respond to instruction to change ears if name cam before the instruction)
EXP 3
IV = whether the group was told to remember as many numbers as they could or not (instructions)
DV = mean score of numbers recalled correctly
What was the experimental design in experiment 1
Why?
Repeated measures design
Participants did both conditions
Shadowed the short passages of fiction in one ear and rejected the list of 35 words in the other ear
What was the experimental design in experiment 2
Repeated measures design
The same participants took part in all conditions.
All participants shadowed a story played to their right ear, they were asked to switch to other message once with their name (affective instruction) once again without their name (non-affective instruction)
What was the experimental design in experiment 3
Independent Measures Design
Two separate groups did two different conditions
One group was told to remember as many numbers as they could but not the other.
Describe the procedure in experiment 1 of moray’s study
Participants were asked to wear headphones and pay attention to a passage played into their right ear and to repeat this message (the shadowed message).
At the same time a short list of simple words was played into their left ear repeatedly but they were asked to ignore this message (the rejected message).
At the end, participants were given a list of words and asked whether they recognised them. Some of the words came from the passage they were paying attention to and some of the words were from the list of the words they had been told to ignore and there was also a control set of words.
The researcher compared how many words were recognised from the passage and the list of words.
Describe the results and conclusion of experiment 1 in Moray’s study
Participants could recognise more words in the shadowed message than the rejected message
Words presented in shadowed message 4.9 out of 7
Words presented in rejected messafe 1.9 out of 7
(findings support cherrys)
CONCLUSION = people will put a mental block on information they are not paying attention to
Describe the procedure of experiment 2 in Moray’s study
Participants were asked to shadow/follow a story played to their right ear at the start.
They were told that responses would be recorded and they had to try to score as few mistakes as possible.
Started with instruction at start eg. ‘Listen with your right ear: you will receive instructions to change ears’
In some conditions, participants heard an instruction to change to their other ear with their name before the instruction (an affective instruction) and in some conditions without their name ( a non-affective instruction)
Describe the results and conclusion of experiment 2 in Moray’s study
When presented with instructions with their name, participants heard and responded to instructions 20/39 TIMES compared to 4/39 TIMES when instruction included no name.
Found to be significant at 1%
CONCLUSION = If information is personally relevant to an individual e.g.. name, then it can break through an attentional block and attract your attention
Describe the procedure in experiment 3 in Moray’s study
Moray thought that instructions given in experiment 2 could have improved the chances of material in rejected message being heard.
‘Listen to your right ear; you will recieve instructions to change ears’
Participants listened to messages that had numbers mixed in towards the end of the message.
One group was told to remember as many numbers as they could but not the other.
What were the results and conclusion in experiment 3 of moray’s study
RESULTS
there was no significant difference in the mean scores of numbers recalled correctly between condition with and without instructions
CONCLUSION
The numbers/digits were unimportant information. They did not break through the attentional block
What were the two main conclusion drawn from all three experiments in Moray’s study
Personally relevant message can penetrate the attentional black set up when the person is focusing on different auditory information
Unimportant information eg. short list of words or numbers in rejected message will not be remembered and will not break through the attentional block
Assess generalisability of Moray’s study
MORE GENERALISABLE
= Research suggests there may be gender differences in dichotic listening as there are in brain lateralization
= Moray had males and females so makes it representative of both genders
LESS GENERALISABLE
= Only used monolingual English speaking participants
= Research found differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in dichotic listening tasks
so findings are considered ethnocentric
