Moray's study

Question 1

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 1

The ability to focus your attention on one stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli

Question 2

What is dichotic listening?

Answer 2

The situation we two messages are presented simultaneously to an individual, with one message in each ear.

Question 3

What is shadowing?

Answer 3

When two messages are played to an individual, one in each ear, and the person reads out one of the messages while ignoring the other.

Question 4

What is an affective instruction?

Answer 4

A message given to a participant with their name in it

Question 5

What is a non-affective instruction?

Answer 5

A message given to a participant without their name in it

Question 6

What were the two overall aims of Moray’s study?

Answer 6

To rigorously test Cherry’s findings on attention

To investigate what types of message would penetrate an attentional block and be paid attention to be the participant.

Question 7

What apparatus was used in Moray’s study?

Answer 7

Brenell mark IV reel to reel tape recorder with twin output
headphones
recorded Passages

Question 8

What was the background to Moray’s study?

Answer 8

To help fix problems faced by air traffic controllers at the time.
Cherry defined the cocktail party effect in 1953 and moray was brought in to help progress the research

Question 9

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

Answer 9

Undergraduate students and research workers of both genders at Oxford university

Question 10

What were the two conclusions of Experiment 1 in Moray’s study?

Answer 10

Participants are much more able to recognise words from the shadowed passage
Almost none of the words from the rejected message were able to break the inattentional barrier

Question 11

What were the results of experiment 1 of Moray’s study?

Answer 11

shadowed passage words: 4.9/7
rejected passage words: 1.9/7
similar words in neither: 2.6/7

Question 12

What was the procedure of experiment 1 of Moray’s study?

Answer 12

Participants had to shadow a piece of prose that they could hear in one ear. In the other ear, a list of simple words was repeated 35 times. At the end of the task participants completed a recognition task where they were shown a list of 21 words; 7 from the shadowed message, 7 from the rejected message and 7 which were in neither but similar to those.

Question 13

What was the aim of experiment 2 of Moray’s study?

Answer 13

To find out what could break through the inattentional barrier - to see if a message with a strong enough meaning to the participant would make the participant pay attention to the rejected message.

Question 14

What was the sample of experiment 2 of Moray’s study?

Answer 14

12 students/ research workers from Oxford university.

Question 15

What was the IV of Experiment 2 of Moray’s study?

Answer 15

Whether an instruction within a rejected passage;
was preceded by the participant’s name
wasn’t preceded by the participant’s name

Question 16

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

Answer 16

Whether participants were more likely to hear an instruction in a message they’re not paying attention to if it is preceded by their name

Question 17

How was the DV operationalised in experiment 2 of Moray’s study?

Answer 17

By whether the participants reported hearing the instruction or whether they followed the instruction.

Question 18

Summarise the passages in Experiment 2 of Moray’s study

Answer 18

Two passages of light fiction, both passages contained an instruction at the start and another one within them. Both were read by a steady monotone voice at a pace of about 130 words per minute by a single male voice.

Question 19

Outline what each participant did in the procedure of experiment 2 of Moray’s study

Answer 19

They each shadowed 10 passages of light fiction. They experienced the same passages in the same order. They were told that the aim was for them to make as few errors as possible in their shadowing of the passages.

Question 20

What was the conclusions of experiment 2 of Moray’s study?

Answer 20

Participants were far more likely to hear instructions that were affective than non-affective

Question 21

What were the results of experiment 2 in Moray’s study?

Answer 21

Affective instruction heard 20/39 of the times, non-affective 4/36

Question 22

What was the effect of being given a warning at the start of the passage to expect instructions to change ears?

Answer 22

There was a slight increase in the frequency of rejected passage heard

Question 23

What was the aim of experiment 3 of Moray’s study?

Answer 23

He wanted to find out the effect of the order of the instructions on identifying material within a rejected message

Question 24

Describe the sample used in Experiment 3 of Moray’s study

Answer 24

two groups of 14 participants - undergraduate students an research workers from oxford

Question 25

What was the IV of experiment 3 of Moray’s study?

Answer 25

group 1 were told they would be asked questions about shadowed messages
group 2 were told specifically to remember as many digits as possible from rejected message

Question 26

What was the DV of experiment 3 of Moray’s study?

Answer 26

The number of digits they heard in the rejected message

Question 27

What were the results of experiment 3 of Moray’s study?

Answer 27

The results showed no difference in the mean scores of digits recalled correctly between the two set-conditions

Question 28

What was the conclusion of experiment 3 of Moray’s study?

Answer 28

Numbers are not important enough to break through the block on the rejected message

Question 29

What was the procedure of experiment 3 of Moray’s study?

Answer 29

Participants were asked to shadow dichotic messages. Sometimes numbers were put into either the shadowed message or rejected message or both or neither. The two groups were told different things about how they would need to use this information (asked questions about shadowed message/ told specifically to remember as many digits as possible from rejected message)

Question 30

In what ways did Moray’s study uphold ethical guidelines?

Answer 30

Confidentiality
debrief
right to withdraw

Question 31

In what ways did Moray’s study break ethical guidelines?

Answer 31

Protection from harm

deception - therefore informed consent

Question 32

Does Moray’s study have external reliability?

Answer 32

Not really, there weren’t enough participants

Question 33

Does Moray’s study have internal reliability?

Answer 33

Yes because almost everything was totally standardised.

Question 34

Does Moray’s study have external (ecological) validity?

Answer 34

Not really, participants would not really have to experience those conditions in day to day life. However, it was based off real life experience (cocktail party - air traffic controllers)

Question 35

Does Moray’s study have external (population) validity?

Answer 35

We don't really know as we don't have much info about participants
They were from oxford so might be a class bias - intelligent - male bias?

Question 36

Does Moray’s study have internal validity?

Answer 36

Study did successfully measure the effect of types of message and whether they would penetrate an attention block and be paid attention to by participant, however there could have been demand characteristics

Question 37

Is Moray’s study ethnocentric?

Answer 37

It can only really be applied to the UK and English speaking cultures, however it is partially a biological study so could be applied to everyone - species specific

Question 38

What Were the four overall conclusions from Moray’s study?

Answer 38

1) In a situation where a subject directs his attention to the reception of a message from one ear, them rejects a message from the other ear, almost none of the verbal constant of the rejected message is remembered
2) A short list of simple words presented as the rejected message shows no trace of being remembered even when presented many times
3) Important messages can penetrate the attention block
4) it is very difficult to make neutral material important enough to break through the block set up in dichotic shadowing