Moray Flashcards
What is a dichotic listening test?
A test where a participant is presented with two different auditory stimuli simultaneously in each ear.
What task are participants asked to perform in a dichotic listening test?
Participants are asked to repeat (shadow) the words they hear in one ear.
Who introduced the method of ‘shadowing’ in dichotic listening tests?
Cherry (1953)
What did Cherry (1953) find about participants’ recall in dichotic listening tests?
Participants who shadowed a message in one ear could recall little or none of the context from the message in the other ear.
What is the aim of the study on dichotic listening tasks?
To find out whether participants can remember the content of messages presented to the ‘non-attended’ ear.
What is the method of the study?
Three laboratory experiments
What is the sample of the study?
Male and female undergraduate students and researchers
What was the procedure for Experiment 1?
A short list of simple words was presented 35 times to one ear while participants shadowed a prose message in the other ear.
What were participants asked to recall in Experiment 1?
Participants were asked to recall the words presented in the non-attending message after 30 seconds.
What were the findings of Experiment 1?
There was no trace of the simple words being remembered, even when presented many times.
What was the procedure for Experiment 2?
Participants shadowed 10 short passages of fiction, making as few mistakes as possible, with specific instructions given at the start.
What type of instructions were given in Experiment 2?
Instructions included ‘listen to your right ear’ and ‘change to your other ear,’ with some prefaced by the participant’s name.
What were the findings regarding name-prefaced instructions in Experiment 2?
Participants heard the instruction 20 out of 39 times when preceded by their name, but only 4 out of 36 times when not preceded by their name.
What was the procedure for Experiment 3?
Two groups of 14 participants shadowed one of two simultaneous dichotic messages, with some messages including digits.
What were the two conditions for participants in Experiment 3?
One group was told they would be asked questions about the content, while the other was asked to remember as many numbers as possible.
What were the findings of Experiment 3?
There was no significant difference in the number of digits recalled in either condition.
What happens to the content of a rejected message in dichotic listening?
Almost none of the content of the rejected message is able to penetrate the attention block.
What type of messages can penetrate the attention block in dichotic listening?
Subjectively important messages, such as a person’s own name, can penetrate the attention block.
Is it easy to make neutral material important enough to break through the attention block in dichotic shadowing?
No, it is very difficult to make neutral material, such as numbers, important enough to break through the attention block.
What can be heard below the level of conscious perception in dichotic listening?
A sound pattern which is important to the participant can be heard, even when they are not paying conscious attention to the message.
