moray (1959)- auditory attention

Question 1

research method

Answer 1

• All tasks were laboratory-based, had high levels of control and had an IV and DV. Therefore they were all laboratory experiments.
• In all tasks, the apparatus used was a Brenell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder modified with two amplifiers to give two independent outputs
through attenuators, one output going to each of the earpieces of a pair of headphones. Matching for loudness was approximate, by asking
participants to say when two messages that seemed equally loud to the experimenter were subjectively equal to them.
Experiment 1
This used a repeated measures design.
This independent variables (IVs) were:
(i) the dichotic listening test
(ii) the recognition test
The dependent variable (DV) was: the number of words recognised correctly in the rejected message.
Experiment 2
This used a repeated measures design.
The independent variable (IV) was: whether or not instructions were prefixed by the participant’s own name.
The dependent variable (DV) was: the number of affective instructions.
Experiment 3
This also used an independent measures design.
The independent variables (IVs) were:
(i) whether digits were inserted into both messages or only one
(ii) 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.
The dependent variable (DV) was: the number of digits correctly reported

Question 2

sample

Answer 2

Participants were undergraduates and research workers of both sexes.
• Participant numbers are not given for Experiment 1 but 12 participants took part in the experimental conditions in Experiment 2 and two
groups of 14 participants were used in Experiment 3.

Question 3

outline- procedure

Answer 3

Experiment 1
• A short list of simple words was repeatedly presented to one of the participant’s ears whilst they shadowed a prose message presented to the
other ear. (The word list was faded in after shadowing had begun, and was equal in intensity to the shadowed message. At the end of the prose
passage it was faded out so as to become inaudible as the prose 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.
• S/he was 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.
Experiment 2
• 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 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
Experiment 3
• Experiment 2 indicated that instructions might alter the set of instructions a participant in such a way as to alter the chances of material in the
rejected message being perceived. Experiment 3 tested this point further.
• Two 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

Question 4

conclusions

Answer 4

In a situation where a participant directs his attention to the reception of a message from one ear, and rejects a message from the other ear,
almost none of the verbal content of the rejected message is able to penetrate the block set up.
• A short list of simple words presented as the rejected message shows no trace of being remembered even when presented many times.
• Subjectively ‘important’ messages, such as a person’s own name, can penetrate the block: thus a person will hear instructions if they are
presented with their own name as part of the rejected message.
• While perhaps not impossible, it is very difficult to make ‘neutral’ material important enough to break through the block set up in dichotic
shadowing.