Simon and Chabris (contemporary study) Flashcards
2 pieces of background research for this study
Mack and Rock
Neisser
What is inattentional blindness?
When someone fails to notice an unexpected stimuli in their visual field because their attention is focused on a different element/task
How did Mack and Rock investigate inattentional blindness?
Images of crosses were presented to participants, asked to judge which line in the cross was longer
Then presented a smiley face (unexpected event): 25% of participants did not see this
Video Neisser used to investigate inattentional blindness
Overlayed 3 separate videos of 2 teams playing basketball and a woman with an umbrella walking across the screen (unexpected event) to create a transparent effect
Task of Neisser
Watch the video and count number of times a team passed the ball (attended event)
Results of Neisser
22/28 participants missed unexpected umbrella woman event
How many aims did this study have?
4
Aim of Simon and Chabris: Transparent/ opaque video
Investigate whether the same level of inattentional blindness is achieved had a realistic video been recorded:
Opaque effect vs Transparent effect
What uis the point in investigating transparent/opaque effect in different conditions?
To see if Neissers findings on missing the unexpected event were truly due to phenomenon of inattentional blindness and not the transparent video he used
How did Simon and Chabris investigate the transparent/ opaque video?
Show half participants an overlayed transparent video like Neisser
and the other half an opaque video all filmed in one go
Aim of Simon and Chabris; similarity of unexpected event to attended task?
To investigate whether participants had the same inattentional blindness than if the unexpected event was similar to the attended task: eg both are the same colour
How did SC investigate similarity of unexpected event to attended task?
By giving half the participants instructions to pay attention toa team in white shirts (not similar colour to black umbrella/gorilla)
And other half to black shirts (same colour to black umbrella/gorilla)
Aim of SC: nature of unexpected event
To investigate if the unexpected event is particularly unusual, will the same level of participants’ inattentional blindness to this event will be shown ????????
How did SC investigate aim of the nature of the unexpected event?
By having half the participants see the unexpected event of a gorilla, very unusual at a basketball game
By having the other half see a woman carrying an umbrella, not so unusual
Aim of SC: difficulty level of attended task the participants were given?
To investigate if there was a difference in inattentional blindness shown if attended task the participants were asked to do was harder or easier
How did SC investigate difficulty of attended task?
Half the participants were given the task of counting number of passes their allocated team (white OR black shirts ) = only 1 count
Half the participants were given task of keeping separate counts of bounce + aerial passes for their allocated team
Out of the 4 aims, which is related to investigating Neissers work?
Showing half the participants an opaque video and the other half a transparent video, were Neisser’s results due to nature of his video (lesss realistic and ghostly) or inattentional blindness?
SC’s new aims
4 aims: difficulty of task, nature of unexpected event, similarity between unexpected event and task
Sample size
192 participants
Number of conditions
16
number of participants per conditon
12
Why was data from 28 participants disqualified?
Participant aware of inattentional blindness etc
Increases construct validity, as participants who may have guessed aim of study were left out who may be aware to look out for uexpected event thus not an accurate measure of inattentional blindness
2 unexpected events
Gorilla
Umbrella woman
2 teams
Black shirt
white shirt
2 tasks
keep count of passes
keep separate count of bounce and aerial passes
Main procedure
Participant watched a 75 second video depending on what of the 16 conditions they were in
Then asked what they saw eg if they saw the unexpected event
The dependent variable
Whether participants reported seeing the unexpected event (gorilla/umbrella woman walking in the background)
Overall percent of participants who reported seeing the unexpected event
54%
Overall percent of participants who FAILED to see the unexpected event
46%
Showed inattentional blindness
What was standardised?
The videos for 16 conditions kept the following variables the same:
Same order the ball is thrown in
Same location (outside elevator doors)
Same video length of 75 seconds
Same time unexpected event occurred (44s in)
Same duration of unexpected event (5 secs)
Sample method
Self selected sample as participants volunteered for research
Results for comparing the transparent vs opaque conditions
The unexpected event was noticed significantly less in the transparent condition compared to the opaque condition
Potentially because higher cognitive load when watching basketball team for tar so aren’t condition
Results for the similarity of unexpected event to attended task
If participants were told to focus on the black shirt team they were more likely to see the gorilla compared to the white team
So contradicts Neisser’s claim that similarity to task does not have an effect on in attentional blindness
Conclusion
Directing attention to a primary task results in people failing to see an unexpected event nearly half of the time when the unexpected event occurs directly in their field or view and is there for a sustained period of time
Concurrent validity
Agrees with previous research by Neisser and Mack and Rock that participants will fail to see something directly in their field of view that is sustained for a period of time if their focus is directed on something else as 46% of participants failed to see the umbrella woman/gorilla
So an accurate way to measure inattentional blindness
Sample method
Opportunity sample of Harvard students who volunteered for chocolate
How can this study be applied?
