Moray (1959): Attention in dichotic listening Flashcards
What is shadowing?
Repeating a message as its heard
What is Cherry’s cocktail party phenomenon?
Cherry found that no matter how deep in conversation you are, if someone mentions your name in another conversation, this would draw your attention.
Background of the study
Cherry’s (1953) method of ‘shadowing’ one of two dichotic messages for his study of attention, found participants were ignorant of the rejected message.
Other researchers moved on from Cherry by investigating why so little was remembered from the rejected message.
Materials used in the study
Brenell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder modified with two amplifiers to give two independent outputs.
Matching for loudness was approximate, by asking participants when the two messages sounded equally loud.
Sample
Undergraduates and consisted of both sexes
E1: Unsure
E2: 12 participants
E3: Two groups of 14 participants
Control measures
Before each experiment the participants were given passages of prose to shadow for practice. All passages throughout the study were recorded by one male speaker.
Research methods of each experiment
E1: RMD
E2 & 3: IMD
Aim of experiment 1
To test Cherry’s findings more rigorously
IV and DV of E1
IV:
1. The dichotic listening test
2. The recognition test
DV: The number of words recognised correctly in the rejected message
Procedure of E1
A short list of words was repeated into one ear, whilst they shadowed a prose message in the other ear.
- It was a 21 list of words repeated 35 times
- Participants were then asked to report as much as they could remember from the rejected message
- The recognition test used similar materials, neither used in the list or passage as a control.
- The gap between the end of shadowing and the recognition test was 30 secs
Results of E1
Words presented in shadowed message= 4.9/7 words remembered
Words in rejected message=1.9/7 words remembered
Words presented in recognition test= 2.6/7 words remembered
Conclusions of E1
- No trace of material from the rejected message being recognised.
- The difference between the new material and that from the shadowed message was significant at 1%
- Findings support those found by Cherry (`1953)
Aim of E2
To investigate whether an affective cue would break the inattentional barrier
IV and DV of E2
IV: Whether or not instructions were prefixed by the participant’s own name
DV: Number of affective instructions
Procedure of E2
- This experiment was conducted to find out the limits of the efficiency of the attentional block
- Participants shadowed ten short passages of light fiction
- They were told that their response would be recorded and that they had to try and make as few as mistakes as possible
- In some passages the names of participants were included, but in two instances the participants were not aware of it
- In half of the cases with the instructions these were prefixed by the participants own name
- The passages were read in a steady monotone voice at about 130 words per minute
- The participant’s responses were tape-recorded and later analysed
Result of E2
- The mean number of instructions heard when presented in the rejected message was calculated, and the difference between the ‘names’ and ‘no names’ was significant: t=3.05
- Only 4 out of 20 occasions in which ‘names’ instructions were heard by participants actually make a change to the other message
Conclusion of E2
Most participants ignored the instructions that they were presented in the passages they were shadowing, and said they thought this was to distract.
Aim of E3
To see whether instructions prior to the task help break the inattentional
IV and DV of E3
IV:
- Whether digits were inserted into both messages or only 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 they could
DV: The number of digits remembered correctly
Procedure of E3
- Two groups of 14 participants shadowed one of two simultaneous dichotic messages
- In some messages digits were inserted towards the end of the message. They were sometimes present in both or only one message. The position of the numbers varied and controls with no numbers were inserted.
- One group of participants was told that it would be asked questions about the content of the rejected message, after it ended. The other group was specifically instructed to remember all the numbers that it could
Results of E3
The difference between the mean number of digits reported under the two conditions analysed and submitted a t test. In none of the cases, whether the score was the mean number of digits spoken during shadowing, nor in he number reported or the sum of the two was the difference significant even at the 5% level of confidence
Overall Conclusions
- If a participant has their attention on one thing, nothing is remembered from the rejected message.
- The short list of simple words were not remembered, no matter how many times it was repeated
- ‘Important’ messages, such as a person’s own name could penetrate through the block; thus a person will hear instructions if they are presented with their own name in the rejected message
- It is difficult to make ‘neutral’ material important enough to break through the block set up in dichotic shadowing
