Simon and Chabris Flashcards
What was the aim of S&C’s study?
To investigate the influence of several factors on inattentional blindness. One of these was looking at the effects of superimposition compared to live events within the video recording, another was measuring the impact of task difficulty, and a third considered wether the unusaliness of the unexpected event had an impact on detection rates.
What was the method and design in S&C’s study?
Lab experiment, independent measures design.
What was the sample for S&C’s study?
228 ps in total, volunteer smaple. Most were undergraduate students who were offered a reward of a candy bar or a single fee for their participation in this and other unrelated studies.
What was the procedure of S&C’s study?
Created 4 videotapes using the same camera, each lasting 75s. Each tape showed two teams of 3 players, one team wearing white shirts and aonther black shirts. the members moved around randomly in the small space, passing an orange basketball to one another in a set order. 21 experimenters tested the ps seperately. Used a standardised script to deliver instructions and followed a written protocol. one IV was the two 5 second unexpected events which appeared after 44-48 s in the video. Umbrella condition- a tall women holding an open umbrella walked across the picture and this was the same as the gorilla condition.
IV 2- transparent and Opaque condition
IV 3-The team colour the p was asked to follow
IV 3- Easy (Mental count of passes) or hard condition (number of bounce passes and areial passes. After performing scores were written and they were verbally aksed qs sych as “did you notice anything other than the six players?”
What were some results for S&C’s study?
Out of 192 ps, 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to.
Ps were more likely to notice the unexpected event in the unexpected opaque condition (67%) compared to the transparent condition (42%)
64% noticed unexpected event in easy compared to 45% in hard
What conclusions were given to S&C’s study?
-Inattentional blindness occurs more frequently in cases of superimposition as opposed to live action.
-The degree of inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the primary task
-Observers are more likely to notice unexpected events if these events are visually similar to the events they are paying attention to.
-Objects can pass through the spatial are of attentional focus and still not be ‘seen’ if they are not specifically being attended to.
What is the key theme for Simon and Chabris’ study?
Attention
In the study by Simon and Chabris into visual attention explain what is menat by ‘change blindness’ and ‘inattentional blindness’
Change blindness is where individuals often do not detect large changes to objects and scenes from one view to the next. Inattentional blindness occurs when attention is diverted to another object or task and observers often fail to perceive an unexpected object, even if it occurs at the point of fixation
Sin Simon&Chabris’ study why were some of the original sample excluded from their results?
36ps discarded
9ps lost count of how many times the ball had been passed
14ps had heard of studies that look at inattentional blindness
7ps had an incomplete count pass
5ps couldn’t be interpreted.
What 4 variables were manipulated in S&C study?
Unexpected event: Gorilla or umbrella
Styles of video:Opaque or transparent
Team colour to follow:Black or white
Difficulty of task: easy or hard
In S&C study identify one of the researchers aims and state the conclusion they drw in relation to that aim.
To look at the effect of superimposition compared to live events within the video recording
Found that inattentional blindness occurs more frequently in cases of superimposition as opposed to live action, but is till a feature of both.
outline the difference between the ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ conditions in the s&C study into visual attention.
Easy condition-Ps were instructed to keep a silent mental count of the number of passes made by the attended team.
Hard condition- Keep a silent menbtal count of the number of bounce passes and areail passes by the attended team
In S&C study outline some controls
The timings of the presntation video were identical for each participant, and the moves in the ‘opaque’ condition were carefully rehearsed so that the videos for the black and white teams were the same.
Evaluate the ecological validity of Simon and Chabris’ study
Low because ps completed the attention task watching a video, within a controlled situation. In real life, even when we concentrate carefully on tasks requiring our attention there would be a number of environmental distractions
the task of counting ball passes does not in itself refelct our typical visual attention tasks.
Evaluatethe validity of Simon and Chabris study
Findings were consistent with previous research , including computerised trials of inattentional blindness, increasing the liklihood that we can generalise their findings to other situations. However, overall approx half of ps noticed the unexpected vent. menaing that inattentional blindness is not a universal visual experience.
