Moray (1959)

Question 1

Background

Answer 1

• Broadbent (1958) argued that humans cope with the flood of available information, by selectively attending to only some information and somehow ‘tune out’ the rest
• Selective attention – here people are presented with two or more simultaneous ‘messages’, and are instructed to process and respond to only one of them.
• Cherry’s (1953) method of ‘shadowing’ found participants who shadowed a message presented to one ear were ignorant of the content of a message simultaneously presented to the other ear.

Question 2

Cocktail Party Effect

Answer 2

A party where people stand around having conversations and drinking cocktails - people at these parties are very skilled at tuning in to one voice or conversation.

Question 3

Dichotic listening task

Answer 3

When two different auditory stimuli are presented into each ear through headphones.

Question 4

Aim

Answer 4

To see if people shadowing one task could recall anything from the rejected task in the other ear.

Question 5

Sample

Answer 5

• Did not provide sample size for experiment 1
• 12 participants in experiment 2
• 2 groups of 14 participants in experiment 3 (28)

Question 6

Controls for the messages

Answer 6

Approximately 60db above the participant’s hearing threshold and the speech rate was about 150 words per minute.

Question 7

Experiment 1 Procedure

Answer 7

• Short list of words spoken 35 times as rejected message
• At the end of shadowing, participant asked to recall anything from the rejected message
• 30 seconds later participants given recognition test of 21 words
• 7 from shadowed passage, 7 from rejected and 7 random

Question 8

Experiment 1 Findings

Answer 8

When someone directs their attention to one thing, almost none of the ‘rejected’ message can be recalled.

• 7 words taken from shadowed passage - average of 4.9/7
• 7 words taken from rejected message - average of 1.9/7
• 7 words similar but random - average 2.6/7

Question 9

Experiment 2 Procedure

Answer 9

• 2 passages of light fiction in each ear - instructions at start to listen to right ear and make no mistakes
• Participants name mentioned 3 times out of 10 passages - 36 affective cues (12 participants x 3)
• Counted number of times participants heard the instructions

Question 10

Experiment 2 Findings

Answer 10

Participants are more likely to hear something if something of relevance is said such as a name - breaks through ‘the block’

• When name was mentioned, participants heard instructions 20/39 times
• When name was not mentioned, participants heard instructions 4/36 times

Question 11

Experiment 3 Procedure

Answer 11

• Numbers put into the message towards the end -sometimes numbers were in both messages, sometimes in shadowed, sometimes in rejected
• IV was the group - 1 group told at start they would be asked about shadowed message, 1 group told to remember as many numbers heard as possible

Question 12

Experiment 3 Findings

Answer 12

• Showed no significant difference between groups

- Concluded that this was because numbers are not important enough to break through the ‘block’, unlike a name