Paper2: Cognitive-Simon and Chabris

Question 1

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Describe the aims to Simon?

Answer 2

• 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.

Question 3

What was the research method?

Answer 3

• laboratory experiment

Question 4

Describe the sample?

Answer 4

• 228 observers
• mostly undergraduate students

Question 5

What were the rewards for taking part?

Answer 5

• Some volunteered without payment
• Some given a large candy
• Some received payment for taking part along with another study.

Question 6

Describe the video clips?

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

What were the independent variables?

Answer 7

Type of video
Type of event
The difficulty of the focused task

Question 8

Describe the transparent video?

Answer 8

the black team, white team and unexpected event were filmed separately then were superimposed on eachother

Question 9

Describe the opaque video?

Answer 9

after rehearsal to avoid collision and to make sure the events looked natural, all seven actors were recorded at the same time

Question 10

Describe the Umberella event

Answer 10

• a tall woman holding an open umbrella crossed the scene from left to right

Question 11

Describe the Gorilla event?

Answer 11

• a shorter woman in full gorilla costume crossed the scene from left to right

Question 12

Describe the easy task?

Answer 12

• keep a mental note of all the passes their team made

Question 13

Describe the hard task?

Answer 13

• keep separate mental notes of the number of ariel passes and the number of bounced passed their team made

Question 14

What 3 questions could the participants be asked?

Answer 14

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?

Question 15

Describe the results from this?

Answer 15

• Overall level of inattentional blindness: 46%
  Participants who saw the unexpected event: 54%
• Noticed the unexpected event more in the opaque video style

Question 16

Describe the conclusions?

Answer 16

• 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.

Question 17

Describe the ethics

Answer 17

• Debrief
  Informed consent

Question 18

Evaluate the situational/individual debate

Answer 18

• Individual differences in attention as over half saw the event, but situational factors may have caused this

Question 19

Evaluate the freewill/ determinism debate

Answer 19

• Deterministic - Cognitive processes have an influence but we have no conscious control over this

Question 20

What were the strengths?

Answer 20

• The research had the high validity expected from controlled laboratory research.
• Extraneous variables were controlled through standard procedures and materials.
• data is consistent

Question 21

What were the limitations?

Answer 21

• 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.