Study looks at 'inattentional blindness', with information from Mack and Rock (1998) and Rubin and Hua (1998), 'selective looking' - Neisser and Becklen (1975), Becklen, Neisser and Littman (1979), Becklen and Cervone (1983), Stoffregen et al (1993)

Study builds on classic studies of the same study topic

Individual: The contemporary study does allow us to see how individuals process stimulus in their environment differently and this results in individual differences in the ability to pay attention to background stimuli. This extends the classic research into auditory information to visual information also

Social: Both pieces of research utilise students for their sample and therefore may not explain groups in society who do not share characteristics that are similar to these

The key theme is attention. Moray found that more auditory information was recognised in shadowed messages compared to the rejected messages and that more affected (instructions preceded by name) messages were heard than non-affective. Simons and Chabris investigated visual attention to investigate inattentional blindness. they did this by showing ps a video of two teams of players - one wearing white t-shits and the other wearing black t-shits - passing a ball to their team players. ps were told to keep either a silent mental count of the total number of passes made by their team. In the easy condition, they were to count all passes, in the hard condition, they were told to separate the number of bounce passes and aerial passes made by their allocated team. 44-48 seconds into the video one of two unexpected events occurred (umbrella woman or gorilla walked into scene from left to right appearing for about 5 seconds before exiting the scene. Simons and Chabris found that overall, 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% did not with more participants noticing the unexpected event in the easy condition compared to the hard condition. This adds to our understanding of attention as it shows that the level of inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the primary task that people's attention is devoted to

One strength of collecting quantitative data is that it is easier to compare and draw conclusions from. This was the data can be used to find out if the results are significant or not. In Simons and Chabris' study, 54% noticed the event and 46% failed to notice it

One weakness of colleting quantitative data is that it does not give reason for people's behaviours. Quantitative data doesn't contain information needed to draw non-numerical conclusions from. In Simons and Chabris' study, we know 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to noticed it but we are unaware as to why

Simons and Chabris is high in internal reliability because they conduced a lab experiment which had standardised procedures and high control. This means that all ps experienced the tasks in the same way. For example, there was a written protocol to ensure standardisation which specified what the experimenters would say to each observer, when they should say it, how and when they should show the videotape, how they would collect and record the data, and how they would debrief observers

Simons and Chabris is high in construct validity because the way visual attention was defined and measured was highly controlled. This means the measures of visual attention eliminated extraneous variables and relates to the characteristics of what was being assessed allowing cause and effect to be inferred more confidently. For example, all participants watched one of four videos and were asked to focus on one thing, either how many passes were made by one of the teams, or how many bounce passes and aerial passes were made by one of the teams. The ps then were asked a series of questions regarding the video and Simons and Chabris can be certain that, because the ps were focused on a certain action in the video, they would not notice the gorilla/umbrella woman