Paper 2 - Moray on Auditory Attention

Question 1

What is the background of this study ?

Answer 1

previous research by Cherry found that pps had no recall of the contents of the message recieved by the ‘rejected’ ear, but they were aware of physical features like the gender of the speaker.

Question 2

what is shadowing ?

Answer 2

playing 2 messages at the same time to a different ear and only paying attention to one of them, e.g. repeating them.

Question 3

what is the aim of experiment 1 ?

Answer 3

test Cherry’s original results more rigorously

Question 4

what is the aim of experiment 2 ?

Answer 4

to see if some kinds of messages ( hearing your name ) break through the attentional block to the rejected ear

Question 5

what is the aim of experiment 3

Answer 5

to see if expectations might affect the way the message to the rejected ear is processed

Question 6

what is the method design of expriment 1 ?

Answer 6

• lab experiment
• repeated measures design
• iv - the message played to the shadowed ear and the rejected ear ( a prose passage and a simple word list)
• dv - recall of words in the rejected message

Question 7

what was the method design for experiment 2

Answer 7

• lab experiment
• repeated measures design
• iv - effect of affective vs non affective messages (affective message contains a person’s name)
• dv - number of affective instructions that the pps responded to

Question 8

what was the method design for experiment 3 ?

Answer 8

• lab experiment
• independent measures design
• iv - whether digits were inserted into one or two messages. And whether participants were told that they’d be asked questions about the shadowed message or told to remember the digits they recalled.
• dv - number of digits recalled.

Question 9

what was the sample ?

Answer 9

• pps were male and female undergraduates or research workers.
• 12 pps in experiment 2
• 14 in experiment 3.

Question 10

what were the materials ?

Answer 10

• two tape recorders were used to play the messages
• in a steady monotone by a male speaker
• the loudness was aprox 60 decibles above the pps threshold

Question 10

what was the procedure of experiment 1 ?

Answer 10

• a passe was played to the shadowed ear and a short list of simple words was presented 35 times to the rejected ear.
• recall of the rejected message was tested immediately after hearing the list using free recall.
• within 30 seconds the pps were given a recognition test of similar material that was not in the list or passage - control condition.

Question 11

what was the procedure of experiment 2 ?

Answer 11

• pps had to shadow 10 passages played to their right ear while another passage was played to the rejected left ear. they were told to try and not listen to the rejcted ear.
• shadowed right ear: at the beginning of each passage there were instructions either ‘listen to your right ear’ or ‘listen to your right ear; you will recieve instructions to change ears’. the second message created expectations for further messages.
• rejected ear: in the middle of 6 passages there were interloped messaged played and were distributed at random. 3 of these contained the pps name ‘affective message’.

Question 12

what was the procedure of experiment 3

Answer 12

• pps were asked to shadow one of two simultaneous messages.
• digits were interloped towards the end of the messages, these were sometimes present in both, one, or neither messages. the position of the numbers were varied randomly.
• group 1 were told they would be asked questions about the shadowed content. Group 2 were told to remember all the digits they could

Question 13

what were the results of experiment 1 ?

Answer 13

• a mean of 4.9 words out of 7 from the shadowed ear were recognised in the final recognition test
• a mean of 1.9 words out of 7 from the rejected ear were recognised
• a mean of 2.6 words out of 7 were recognised from the control list

Question 14

what were the results from experiment 2 ?

Answer 14

• pps attended to more of the instructions from the affective messages than the non affective messages to the rejected ear
• 20 out of 39 affective messages were responded to compared with 4 out of 39 non affective messages.
• a t-test showed that this was highly significant p<0.01

Question 15

what were the results from experiment 3

Answer 15

there was no significant difference between the number of digits recalled by either group of pps.

Question 16

what were the conclusions of experiment 1

Answer 16

the content of the rejected ear is blocked, confirming Cherry’s results

Question 17

what were the conclusions from experiment 2 ?

Answer 17

an affective message breaks through the attentional barrier

Question 18

what were the conslusions from experiment 3

Answer 18

neutral material does not become important enought to break the attentional barrier even when expectations were increased by telling the pps they had to recall all digits

Question 19

what were the strengths and weaknesses of the research method and technique ?

Answer 19

• lab experiments allowed for high control and standardised procedures allowing for high reliability and validity. however there is low ecological validity
• repeated measures design in experiment 1 and 2 allowed for no pps variables, but increases order effects
• indepedndent measures deisgn in experiment 3 decreases order effects but increases pps variables

Question 20

what is the strengths and weaknesses of this sample ?

Answer 20

• easily accessible because he recruited people he worked with.
• unrepresentable as students are more likely to have higher cognitive abilities so they may perform better. low population validity.

Question 21

evaluate the data of this study

Answer 21

• quantitative data is objective and easy to analyse to make statistical conclusions from to allow for comparison
• however it lacks detail and reasoning

Question 22

evaluate the ethnocentrism of the study

Answer 22

people in non western cultures may not learn to focus their attention in the way that we do, e.g. collectivist culturs may focus on things as a whole because they’re more concerned with group behaviour than individuals.

Question 23

evaluate the ethical considerations

Answer 23

deception - in experiment 3 pps were not aware that they would be tested aftwer on recall of digits.

Question 24

what debates and perspectives does this study relate to

Answer 24

• determinism - factors beyond our consciousness may control our perception.
• freewill - we can consciously focus our attention is nessecary
• psychodynamic perspective - the importance of our name in material breaking through the attentional block into consciousness.

Question 25

how is this study useful

Answer 25

understanding the circumstances that attention is lost or gained and how to avoid losing attention with the potential to reduce the number of accidents and save lives.