Simons & Chabris (1999)

Question 1

(Simons & Chabris) Define the term ‘inattentional blindness’.

Answer 1

When you fail to see something because you’re paying attention to something else.

Question 2

(Simons & Chabris) Background: Explain Neisser’s research.

Answer 2

Participants watched a video of 2 basketball teams (3 players on each team) and being asked to count the number of passes made to each other.

Question 3

(Simons & Chabris) Background: What were the results of Neisser’s research.

Answer 3

22/28 participants failed to see a woman carrying an umbrella walk across the screen even though this event lasted 4 seconds of the video (this is called sustained inattentional blindness).

Question 4

(Simons & Chabris) What are the aims of this study?

Answer 4

To investigate whether the transparency of a video (like in Neisser’s research) affected attention.
To investigate the effects of the nature of the unexpected event, what participants were told to focus on and the difficulty of the task given.

Question 5

(Simons & Chabris) Describe the sample of this study.

Answer 5

228 participants - most were undergraduate students from Harvard University (USA).
The data from 36 participants was removed for a range of reasons leaving 192 participants within the data analysis (12 per condition).

Question 6

(Simons & Chabris) Describe the procedure of this study.

Answer 6

Individually, each participant was shown a 75 second video clip and asked questions on what they had seen.

There were 16 conditions of the experiment with participants only taking part in one condition.

The 16 conditions were based around the 4 independent variables.

Question 7

(Simons & Chabris) What are the 4 independent variables?

Answer 7

Video appearance
The event
Similarity of task
Difficulty of task

Question 8

(Simons & Chabris) Explain the independent variable ‘video appearance’.

Answer 8

Whether the video was transparent or opaque.

Question 9

(Simons & Chabris) Explain the independent variable ‘the event’.

Answer 9

Whether the video included a woman carrying an umbrella or a gorilla.

Question 10

(Simons & Chabris) Explain the independent variable ‘similarity of task’.

Answer 10

Whether they were asked to count the number of passes made by the white or black team.

Question 11

(Simons & Chabris) Explain the independent variable ‘difficulty of task’.

Answer 11

Whether they were asked to count the number of passes or the number of bounce and aerial passes.

Question 12

(Simons & Chabris) What was the dependent variable?

Answer 12

Whether the participant reported seeing the unexpected event or not.

Question 13

(Simons & Chabris) What are the overall results?

Answer 13

46% level of inattentional blindness.

Question 14

(Simons & Chabris) What are the result for ‘video appearance’?

Answer 14

Opaque: Overall 66.5% saw the unexpected event.

Transparent: Overall 41.6% saw the unexpected event.

Question 15

(Simons & Chabris) What are the result for ‘the event’?

Answer 15

Woman with umbrella: Overall 65.5% saw the unexpected event

Gorilla: Overall 42.6% saw the unexpected event.

Question 16

(Simons & Chabris) What are the result for ‘similarity of task’?

Answer 16

Black Team: 67% saw the unexpected event.

White Team: 8% saw the unexpected event.

Question 17

(Simons & Chabris) What are the result for ‘difficulty of task’?

Answer 17

Easy: Overall 63.5% saw the unexpected event.

Difficult: Overall 44.6% saw the unexpected event.

Question 18

(Simons & Chabris) Explain the conclusion of this study.

Answer 18

The study shows how paying attention to one task may result in people failing to see an unexpected event nearly half of the time (even when it is right in front of them and lasts for a sustained period of time).
This provides further evidence for sustained inattentional blindness.

Question 19

(Simons & Chabris) Evaluate the sample regarding external reliability.

Question 20

(Simons & Chabris) Evaluate the sample regarding population validity.

Answer 20

The sample size overall (228) is large enough to establish a consistent effect but the number in each condition (12) is not large enough.

Question 21

(Simons & Chabris)

Answer 21

The sample was mainly students from Harvard so not very generalisable to other groups (e.g older individuals may have lower attention levels).

Question 22

(Simons & Chabris) Evaluate how this study links to the debate of ‘usefulness’.

Answer 22

Can be used as evidence why we should NOT use phones or any device while we are driving.

Question 23

(Simons & Chabris) Evaluate how this study links to the debate of ‘holism’.

Answer 23

Investigated multiple factors influencing attention such as task difficulty, task similarity, video transparency and the unexpected event itself.

Question 24

(Simons & Chabris) Evaluate how this study links to the debate of ‘determinism’.

Answer 24

The attention of the participants was determined by the task and video presented to them.

Question 25

(Simons & Chabris) How is this study similar to ‘Moray’? (4)

Answer 25

Both included deception
Both were lab experiments
Both had students within their sample
Both had small samples for the conditions

Question 26

(Simons & Chabris) How is this study different to ‘Moray’? (3)

Answer 26

Different experimental designs (repeated vs independent)
Different types of attention being studied (auditory vs visual)
Different countries studied (UK vs USA)

Question 27

(Simons & Chabris) How HAS this study changed our understanding of attention? (2)

Answer 27

It tells us about a new type of attention (visual vs auditory)
It tells us about how you might miss something rather than notice it

Question 28

(Simons & Chabris) How HASN’T this study changed our understanding of attention? (1)

Answer 28

Tells us the same thing in that if we are focused on one thing we are likely to miss something else

Question 29

(Simons & Chabris) How has/hasn’t this study changed our understanding of diversity, regarding individual diversity?

Answer 29

HASN’T: Both showed individual differences in attention but did not investigate why this was the case.

Question 30

(Simons & Chabris) How has/hasn’t this study changed our understanding of diversity, regarding social diversity?

Answer 30

HASN’T: Both were carried out on similar types of people (Oxford/Harvard students).

Question 31

(Simons & Chabris) How has/hasn’t this study changed our understanding of diversity, regarding cultural diversity?

Answer 31

HAS: S+C investigated attention in the US rather than the UK

HASN’T: Both found similar results so shows there seems to be no cultural differences