Moray

Question 1

What is dichotic listening?

Answer 1

Dichotic listening is the auditory process that involves listening with both ears

Question 2

What is the aim of Moray’s study?

Answer 2

The aim of the study was to test Cherry’s dichotic listening findings in relation to:

• the amount of information recognised in the rejected message
• the effect of hearing one’s own name in the unattended message
• the effect of instructors to identify a specific target in the rejected message

Question 3

Outline the participants used in Moray’s study into dichotic listening

Answer 3

• all undergraduate students
• mixed sexes
• number of p’s for experiment 1 not recorded
• number of p’s for experiment 2 was 12
• number of p’s for experiment 3 was 28 (2 groups of 14

Question 4

What was the name of the tape recorder used in Moray’s dichotic listening?

Answer 4

Brennell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorders

Question 5

What was the method for the experiments used in Moray’s study?

Answer 5

All 3 participants were laboratory experiments

-all had IVs and DVs and high control

Question 6

What were the two IVs for experiment 1 in Moray’s study?

Answer 6

• the dichotic test

- the recognition test

Question 7

What was the experimental design used in experiment 1 of Moray’s study?

Answer 7

Repeated measure

-participants took part in all conditions

Question 8

What was the DV from experiment 1 in Moray’s test

Answer 8

The number of words recognised correctly in the rejected message

Question 9

Outline the procedure from experiment 1 in Moray’s study

Answer 9

• A short list of simple words was repeatedly presented to one ear of the participant while they shadowed a prose message presented to the other ear (in one ear the list of words would be heard and in the other ear they would hear a story that they had to repeat out loud as they heard it. The list and prose were the same intensity and volume. The word list was repeated 35 times.
• participants were told to pay attention to the prose message (the story). This meant that the prose and shadowing task were the attended message whilst the words list was the rejected message - this was to see what, if anything, of the rejected message (word list) was heard and remembered by p’s given that they were told to focus on the prose and shadowing task
• After this, participants were asked to report all they could of the content of the rejected message (they had to try and recall the words given on the list that they weren’t really paying attention to). They were then given a recognition test using similar material as a control. This meant they were shown words that were in the shadowed message and the rejected message. They also used a list of words that were not in either the shadowed message or the rejected message. The used these words as a control to compare their results to.

Question 10

Outline a result from experiment 1 of Moray’s study

Answer 10

• The shadowed message had a mean of 4.9 out of 7 words correctly identified words from the recognition test (showing it had the most attention paid to it
• The results of the rejected message (the words list) had a mean score of 1.9 out of 7 words correctly identified from the recognition test showing that the rejected message was largely ignored
• The control list of words from the recognition test had a mean of 2.6 out of 7 words incorrectly identified. This shows that the participants thought they remembered words that they hadn’t even heard moreso than the words they had in the rejected list (1.9).

Question 11

What was the IV of experiment 2 in Moray’s study

Answer 11

whether or not the instructions were prefixed by the participant’s own name

Question 12

What was the DV of experiment 2 in Moray’s study

Answer 12

the number of affective (personal) instructions

Question 13

Procedure for exp 2 in Moray’s study

Answer 13

simply put, they had to shadow ten pieces of prose and sometimes they heard instructions with and without their names. The idea was would the instructions with their names be followed because the name might get their attention compared to instructions without their name being used, which would be ignored.

Question 14

Results from Moray’s experiment 2

Answer 14

The results show that the affective instructions (ones where their names were used) were heard more times (20) compared to the non affective instructions (no names used) that were heard 4 times.

Question 15

IVs of Moray’s experiment 3

Answer 15

• Whether digits (numbers) were inserted into both messages or only one message.
• Whether participants had to answer questions about the shadowed message at the end of each passage or whether participants had to remember all the numbers that they could.

Question 16

DV of Moray’s exp 3

Answer 16

The amount of numbers correctly recalled

Question 17

What was the experimental design of Moray’s exp 3

Answer 17

Independent measures design

Question 18

Moray’s exp 3 procedure

Answer 18

• Two groups of 14 participants were required to shadow 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 was specifically instructed to remember all the numbers that it could

Question 19

Results from Moray’s exp 3

Answer 19

• In none of the cases, whether the score is the mean number of digits spoken during shadowing, nor in the number reported, nor the sum of these two, is the difference significant even at the 5% level of confidence.
• the numbers, did not become “important” enough to break through the attentional barrier. The digits were not heard, they were ignored and were not important enough to break the attentional barrier. This means that compared to study 2, names can break the attentional barrier, but digits cannot.

Question 20

Moray exp.3 conclusions

Answer 20

• In a situation where a participant directs their 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 break the attentional barrier (sometimes called attentional block).
• 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 hearing your own name, can penetrate the attentional block. Therefore 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’ (not important) information important enough to break through the attentional block set up in dichotic shadowing tasks.