Paper2: Cognitive-Simon and Chabris Flashcards
What is inattentional blindness?
Failure to see and event or object in your field of vision because you are so focused on another element of what you can see.
Describe the aims to Simon?
- To investigate if the inattentional blindness would be more likely if the event was similar to the attentional event.
- To find out if particularly unusual events would be more likely to be seen
- To investigate whether p’s would have trouble noticing the unexpected event when the task they were given was more difficult.
- To investigate the effect of the transparent video and compare if the same level of blindness would occur in a more realistic video.
What was the research method?
- laboratory experiment
Describe the sample?
- 228 observers
- mostly undergraduate students
What were the rewards for taking part?
- Some volunteered without payment
- Some given a large candy
- Some received payment for taking part along with another study.
Describe the video clips?
- Two teams, made up of 3 players, one team wearing white the other black
- Passed a standard basketball using ariel and bounce passes (consistent behaviour)
- Unexpected even occurred 44-48 seconds in
- Teams continued actions during event
What were the independent variables?
Type of video
Type of event
The difficulty of the focused task
Describe the transparent video?
the black team, white team and unexpected event were filmed separately then were superimposed on eachother
Describe the opaque video?
after rehearsal to avoid collision and to make sure the events looked natural, all seven actors were recorded at the same time
Describe the Umberella event
- a tall woman holding an open umbrella crossed the scene from left to right
Describe the Gorilla event?
- a shorter woman in full gorilla costume crossed the scene from left to right
Describe the easy task?
- keep a mental note of all the passes their team made
Describe the hard task?
- keep separate mental notes of the number of ariel passes and the number of bounced passed their team made
What 3 questions could the participants be asked?
While you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual in the video?
Did you notice anything other than the 6 players?
Did you see a gorilla (umbrella woman) walk across the screen?
Describe the results from this?
- Overall level of inattentional blindness: 46%
Participants who saw the unexpected event: 54% - Noticed the unexpected event more in the opaque video style
Describe the conclusions?
- inattentional blindness occurs in many cases, even when an event lasts for 5 seconds.
- similarity of the missed stimulus did make a differed because the black gorilla was seen more when the players were dressed in black.
- this study supported the idea that attention is needed for us to consciously perceive something.
Describe the ethics
- Debrief
Informed consent
Evaluate the situational/individual debate
- Individual differences in attention as over half saw the event, but situational factors may have caused this
Evaluate the freewill/ determinism debate
- Deterministic - Cognitive processes have an influence but we have no conscious control over this
What were the strengths?
- The research had the high validity expected from controlled laboratory research.
- Extraneous variables were controlled through standard procedures and materials.
- data is consistent
What were the limitations?
- participants may not have remembered or been honest.
- low ecological validity because this is not a situation that is experienced in real-life.
- demand characteristics
- The sample is not fully generalisable because they only used students.
