Simons and Chabris: Attention (Cognitive)

Question 1

When was Simons and Chabris’s study published?

Answer 1

1999

Question 2

What theories was Simons and Chabris’s study based on?

Answer 2

-Focused visual attention: there is so much visual clutter in day to day life that not everything can be perceived at once, instead, objects of interest are selected for further processing
-Change blindness: individuals often don’t detect large changes to objects and scenes, particularly if those objects are not the centre of interest in the scene
-Individuals perceive and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention
-Inattentional blindness: when attention is diverted to another object or task, observers often fail to perceive an unexpected event
-The harder one has to concentrate, the less likely one is to be distracted
-Theories of divided attention include: limited capacity, multi-channel, automaticity model, and supervisory attentional system model

Question 3

What was the background to Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 3

-Previous studies found that when observers had to engage in a continuous task that required them to focus on a visual sece, most observers would not see the unexpected event
-These studies didn’t use the empirical approach so Simons and Chabris wanted to use the approach from earlier studies
-Looked into ‘inattentional blindness’
-Builds on classic studies of divided visual attention but also Moray’s study on divided auditory attention
-Previous studies did not consider the role of task difficulty or the difference between a video filmed once or a video which had been superimposed

Question 4

What was the research method and design in Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 4

Laboratory experiment that used an independent measures design

Question 5

What were the IVs and the DV in Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 5

IVs were:
-Gorilla or Umbrella Woman
-Opaque (filmed once at the same time) or transparent (each team and unexpected event filmed separately, made partially transparent, then superimposed together)
-Whether they followed the black or white team
-Hard task (separate silent mental counts of the number of bounce passes and aerial passes) or easy task (silent mental count of the number of passes)
16 conditions of the IV together
DV was the number of participants in each of the conditions who noticed the unexpected event

Question 6

What was on the video tapes in Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 6

-All four were 75 seconds
-2 teams of 3, one wearing black, the other white
-Moved in random motion passing a basketball in a standardised order
-Passes were either bounce or aerial and players would also dribble, wave their arms, and make other movements
-After 44-48 seconds, the unexpected event occurred. Either a tall woman holding an open umbrella walked from off camera on one side to the other side through the action or a shorter woman wearing a gorilla costume walked through in the same way. The unexpected event lasted 5 seconds and the basketball game continued
-In a separate opaque-style video, the gorilla waked across and stopped in the middle, tuned to face the camera, thumped its chest, then continued on

Question 7

What was the sample for Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 7

-228 participants
-Almost all undergraduate students
-Volunteered and received either a large candy bar or was paid a single fee for participating in a larger testing session including another, unrelated experiment
-Data from 36 participants were discarded so results were used from 192 participants, these were equally distributed across the conditions of the IV
-12 different participants for used in the controlled observations in which the gorilla thumped its chest

Question 8

What was the procedure for Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 8

-All participants were tested individually and gave informed consent in advance
-Before viewing the video tape, participants were told they would be watching two teams passing basketballs and to follow either the white or black team. They were also told to either keep a silent mental count of the total number of passes by the attended team or of the number of bounce passes and aerial passes
-After watching the video, participants were immediately asked to write down the number of passes they counted
-They were then asked: while you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual in the video? Did you notice anything other than the six players? Did you see a gorilla/woman carrying an umbrella walk across the screen?
-After any yes answers, they were asked to provide details and if the participant mentioned the unexpected event, the remaining questions would be skipped
-They were then asked if they had heard of/been in a similar experiment and if they had, their data was discarded
-They were then debriefed and shown the video again
-Testing lasted about 5-10 minutes

Question 9

What were the key findings from Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 9

-Out of the 192 participants, 54% noticed the unexpected event
-More participants noticed the unexpected event in the opaque condition (67%) than the transparent condition (42%)
-More participants noticed the unexpected event in the Easy (64%) than the Hard (45%) conditions
-The effect of task difficulty was greater in the Transparent condition than in the Opaque condition
-The Umbrella Woman was noticed more often than the Gorilla overall (65% versus 44%)
-The gorilla was noticed by more participants who followed the Black team (black 58%, white 27%)
-However, there was little difference between those following different teams in noticing the Umbrella Woman (black 62% and white 69%)
-Only 50% noticed the event in the controlled observation which was roughly the same as overall in the main study

Question 10

What possible conclusions can be drawn from Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 10

-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

Question 11

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the different research method used in Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 11

-A number of controls were put in place to eliminate extraneous variables (timings were identical for each participant and the moves in the opaque condition were carefully rehearsed so the videos were the same.
-Lacks ecological validity due to environment

Question 12

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the type of data collected in Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 12

-Quantitative data in the form of yes/no questions
-Easy to analyse and compare between conditions
-Lacks context of the participants’ experience of watching the video

Question 14

What are the ethical considerations for Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 14

-Consent prior to participation
-Slightly deceived for the purpose of the study
-Unlikely to have caused any distress
-Fully debriefed afterwards and were allowed to watch the video again which was important as they may have felt frustrated for missing the unexpected event

Question 15

Can Simons and Chabris’s study be considered valid?

Answer 15

-Low ecological validity as it was done in a controlled environment, counting passes is not realistic to real life, and gorilla or umbrella woman are not representative of real life
-Findings were consistent with previous research
-However, roughly half of participants noticed the unexpected event so inattentional blindness is not a universal visual experience

Question 16

Can Simons and Chabris’s study be considered reliable?

Answer 16

-A large number of researchers were conducting individual trials, which could introduce issues in reliability
-However, this was controlled for through the use of a standardised script to brief and question participants
-There was also a range in TV screen sizes from 13 to 36 inches

Question 17

Was there any sampling bias in Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 17

-Volunteer sampling and mostly undergraduate students so may be difficult to generalise
-More likely to have been predominantly young people who could be more vigilant than average
-Removed bias from participants who were familiar with the type of task they were being asked to do as they discarded their data

Question 18

Can Simons and Chabris’s study be considered ethnocentric?

Answer 18

-Participants were all selected by student experimenters at Iowa State University in America
-It may not be the case that basic cognitive processes are universal
-One study found that Asian participants are more likely to detect changes in the context than in the focal aspects of an image and the opposite for Americans

Question 19

What are practical applications of Simons and Chabris’s study?

Answer 19

-Useful in explaining why we may fail to notice certain events in real world situations
-It can be used to identify situations that may increase the likelihood of inattentional blindness such as when doing a difficult task
-Also poses the question when such ‘blindness’ occurs. It could either be we fail to perceive the event altogether, or that it is quickly forgotten due to irrelevancy.