Simons and Chabris

Question 1

Outline the sample of Simon and Chabris’ study?

Answer 1

• 228 participants (called observers)
• recruited via volunteer sampling
• P’s were either offered a large candy bar, a single fee for taking part in a larger study, or to participate without compensation for taking part in the study

Question 2

What was the method used in Simon and Chabris’ study?

Answer 2

Laboratory experiment

- took place under controlled conditions

Question 3

What were the IVs of Simon and Chabris’ study?

Answer 3

1. The transparent or opaque video condition
2. The gorilla or umbrella woman as the unexpected event
3. The hard or easy task condition
4. The black or white team condition

-The ivs were intermixed to create 16 individual conditions e.g 1. transparent, gorilla, hard, black condition and 2. opaque, umbrella woman, easy, white condition etc

Question 4

What was the DV in Simon and Chabris’ study?

Answer 4

The dependent variable was the number of participants in each of the conditions that noticed the unexpected event (the gorilla or umbrella woman).

Question 5

What was the experimental design of Simon and Chabris’ study?

Answer 5

independent measures

-different participants were used in each of the 16 conditions.

Question 6

What were the questions asked to participants after they had watched the video?

Answer 6

(i) While you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual on the video?
(ii) Did you notice anything other than the six players?
(iii) Did you see anyone else (besides the six players) appear on the video?
(iv) Did you see a gorilla [woman carrying an umbrella] walk across the screen?

Question 7

Outline results from Simon and Chabris’ study

Answer 7

• Out of all 192 participants (that were left remaining) across all conditions 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to notice the unexpected event.
• More participants noticed the unexpected event in the opaque condition (67%) compared to the transparent condition (42%)
• More participants noticed the unexpected event in the easy (64%) task compared to the hard (46%) task
• The umbrella woman (66%) was noticed more often than the gorilla (44%)
• The effect of task difficulty was greater in the transparent condition (easy 56% and hard 27%) than the opaque condition (easy 71% and hard 62%).

Question 8

Conclusions from Simon and Chabris’ experiment

Answer 8

-Overall, about half of observers will fail to detect an ongoing, unusual and unexpected event while engaged in a different task of visual attention. There are also four main conclusions:
•Inattentional blindness occurs more frequently in cases of superimposition as opposed to live action, but is still a feature of both
•The degree of inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the primary task, and is more likely when the primary task is hard.
•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 area of attentional focus and still not be ‘seen’ if they are not specifically being attended to.