Moray Flashcards
Define cocktail party effect.
The concept originally suggested by Cherry in which we would hear it when our own name is said within a crowded room.
Define dichotic listening.
Where headphones are worn by a participant and a different message is played to each ear at the same time.
Define shadowing.
When a participant is told to focus on a passage of text and repeat it out loud as they hear it.
Define affective instructions.
When a person is asked to do something, preceded by their name being said.
Define non-affective instructions.
When a person is asked to do something, but their name is not used.
Define inattentional barrier.
This is where you only listen to the conversation you’re participating in and not the conversations around you.
What is the background to Moray’s study?
- Colin Cherry (1953) was interested in how people put up an inattentional barrier at a party with multiple conversations going on.
- Cherry created a dichotic listening task and asked participants to shadow one message and found that participants failed to notice details of the unattended message.
What was the overall aim of Moray’s study?
To test Cherry’s findings on the inattentional barrier more thoroughly and scientifically.
What was the common apparatus used in all three experiments?
- Brenell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder
- Headphones
What was the research method used in Moray’s study?
What was the experimental design used in Moray’s study?
Sampling method?
What was the sample in experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
- Undergraduate students and staff
- Males and females
- From Oxford University
What was the independent variable in experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
The attended message (shadowed passage) vs the rejected message (word list).
What was the dependent variable in experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
Number of words recognised from the word list.
What was the procedure in experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
- Participants had to shadow on a piece of prose that they could hear in the right ear check which was the attended message.
- A shirt list of simple words was spoken 35 times as the rejected message.
- At the end of the task, participants were asked to recall all they could remember of the rejected message. check
- Then, approximately 30 seconds after the completion of the shadowing tasks, participants were given a recognition test consisting of 21 words - 7 from the shadowed passage, 7 from the rejected passage and 7 similar words not present in either passage - and participants were asked to choose which words they recognised.
What were the results of experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
- 4.9 out of 7 words were recognised from the shadowed passage on average.
- 1.9 out of 7 words were recognised from the rejected passage on average.
- 2.6 out of 7 words were recognised from the similar words list (neither passage) on average.
What were the conclusions made from experiment 1 of Moray’s study?
Participants are much more able to recognise words from the shadowed passage. Almost none of the words from the rejected message are able to break the ‘inattentional barrier’.
What was the aim in experiment 2 of Moray’s study?
To find out if an affective cue (their name) would break the inattentional barrier.
What was the sample in experiment 2 of Moray’s study?
- 12 students /research workers check
- Makes and females
- From Oxford University
What was the independent variable in experiment 2 of Moray’s study?
Whether the instructions were affective or non-affective
What was the dependent variable in experiment 2 of Moray’s study?
Whether participants reported hearing the instruction (or followed the instruction) or not.
OR CHECK
Whether participants were more likely to heaven an instruction in a message they weren’t paying attention to if it is preceded by their name. This was operationalised by whether participants reported hearing the instruction (or followed the instruction) or not.
What was the procedure in experiment 2 of Moray’s study?
- Participants heard two passage of light fiction - one in each ear.
- In all cases the passages began with an instruction to listen to the right ear.
- Some passages contained instructions within them (3 had affective instructions within and 3 had non-affective instructions within).
- Both passages were read in a steady monotone male voice at a pace of about 130 words per minutes.
- All participants shadowed all 10 passages (repeated measures design).
