Moray Flashcards
how does Moray link to the Cognitive area?
studdies attention. This specific
study was included because it is one of the many studies from the 1950s
which sought to investigate auditory attention; Moray’s study comprises
a series of three experiments, one of which investigates the ‘cocktail
party effect’ and what kind of information breaks the attentional barrier.
What theory is Morays study based on?
attention is selective
background to morays study?
cherry’s (1953) method of shadowing’one of two dichotic messages for his study of attention in listening found participants who shadowed a message presented to one ear were ignorant of the content of a message simultaneously presented to the other ear.
- Other researchers then moved on from Cherry’s work on how people can attend to one message by investigating why so little seemed to be remembered about the other conversations (Hampton & Morris, 1996)
what was the method to Morays study?
Lab based and had a high level of control.
Experiment 1: repeated measures design - IV=dichotic and recognition test - DV=number of words recognised in the rejected message
Experiment 2: repeated measures design - IV= whether or not the instructions were prefixed with the participants own name - DV=number of affective instructions
Experiment 3: repeated measures design-ID= whether or not digits were inserted in both messages or one / 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- DV=number of digits correctly reported
sample to morays study?
undergraduates and research workers of both sexes, 12 ppts tool part in E2 and 2 groups of 14 in E3
procedure of Morays study?
E1: A short list of simple words was repeatedly presented to one of the participant’s ears whilst they shadowed a message presented to the other ear. (The word list was faded in after shadowing had begun, at the end of the
passage it was faded out to become inaudible as it finished.)
• The word list was repeated 35 times.
• The participant was then asked to report all he could of the content of the rejected message.
• then given a recognition test using similar material, present in neither the list nor the passage, as a control.
• The gap between the end of shadowing and the beginning of the recognition test was about 30 seconds.
E2: was conducted to find out the limits of efficiency of the attentional block.
• Participants shadowed ten short passages of light fiction.
• They were told that their responses would be recorded and that the object of the experiment was for them to try to score as few mistakes as possible.
• In some of the passages instructions were interpolated, but in two instances the participants were not warned of these.
• In half of the cases with instructions these were prefixed by the participant’s own name.
E3: 2 groups of 14 participants shadowed one of two simultaneous dichotic messages.
• In some of the messages digits were interpolated towards the end of the message. These were sometimes present in both messages,sometimes only in one. The position of the numbers in the message and relative to each other in the two messages were varied, and controls with no numbers were also used, randomly inserted.
• One group of participants was told that it would be asked questions about the content of the shadowed message at the end of each message, the other group was specifically instructed to remember all the numbers that it could.
findings of morays study?
E1: the 30-second delay was unlikely to have caused the rejected material to be lost because words from early in the shadowed message were
recognised. These findings support those found by Cherry (1953).
E2: most ppts ignored the instructions in the passage they were shadowing. On only 4 out of the 20 occasions in which the ‘names’ instructions were heard did the participants actually make a change to the other message.
E3: difference between the mean number of digits reported under the two conditions of set were analysed and submitted to a t test. In none
of the cases, whether the score was the mean number of digits spoken during shadowing, nor in the number reported, nor the sum of these two was the difference significant even at the 5% level of confidence.
Moray conclusions?
A short list of simple words presented as the rejected message shows no trace of being remembered even when presented many times. And subjectively ‘important’messages, such as a person’s own name, can penetrate the block
