Moray
background
Attention is a limited resource. When our attention is focused on certain things a 'barrier' is put up that stops us from focusing on their thing.
Cherry was interested in how people put upon an intentional barrier at a party with multiple conversations going on.
This is where you only listen to the conversation you're participating in and not the conversations around you.
The cocktail party effect is when this barrier can be broken can be broken only by the sound of your name.
overall aim
To test Cherry's findings on the inattentional barrier more thoroughly
apparatus used
Brenall Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder
headphones
experiment 1
sample
undergraduate students
male and female
from Oxford University
procedure
Participants had to shadow a piece of prose that they could hear in one ear. This is the attended message because participants were focusing on it.
In the other ear (the message they weren't paying attention to) a list of simple words was repeated 35 times. This is the rejected message.
At the end of the task, participants completed a recognition task. Participants had to indicate what they recognised from a list of 21 words.
results
word list
conclusions
Participants are much more able to recognise words from the shadowed passage. Almost none of the words from the rejected messages broke the inattentional barrier
- 7 words from the shadowed passage
- 7 words from the rejected passage
- similar words that did not appear in either passage
mean number of recognised words
- 4.9
- 1.9
- 2.6
experiment 2
aim
to find out if an effective cue (their name) would break the inattentional barrier
sample
12 undergraduate students
male and female
oxford university
IV
whether an instruction within a rejected passage:
- was preceded by the participant's name (i.e. it was affective)
- was not preceded by the participant's name (i,e. it was non-affective
DV
whether participants were more likely to hear an instruction in a message they're not paying attention to if it is preceded by their name
this was operationalised by whether they reported hearing the instruction or whether they actually followed the instruction
procedure
two passages of light fiction were heard: one in one ear; the other in the other ear
6 passages that the participant heard contained an instruction at the start and then another instruction within them
both passages were read in a steady monotone at a pace of about 130 words per minute by a single male voice
results
number of times the instruction was presented in the rejected passage
affective instructions
non-affective instructions
39
36
number of times the instruction in the rejected passage was heard
affective instructions
non-affective instructions
20
4
conclusions
affective messages (such as names) are able to break the inattentional barrier. This backs up the previous work by Cherry.
led to a 3rd experiment because Moray was interested whether pre-warning would help break the inattentional barrier
experiment 3
aim
this experiment wanted to find out if pre-warning would help neutral material break the inattentional barrier
sample
28 undergraduate students
male and female
from oxford university
split into 2 groups of 14
design
independent
IV
warning: participants were told they should memorise as many digits they heard as possible
no warning: participants were told they'd be asked questions at the end about the shadowed passage
DV
how many digits they memorised from rejected message
procedure
participants were asked to shadow one message
the messages sometimes contained digits towards the end
the digits were sometimes only in the shadowed passage, sometimes only in the rejected passage, sometimes in both and sometimes there were no digits (control)
results
there was no significant difference between the groups in how many digits they were able to recall from the rejected passage
conclusion
warnings do not help neutral information break the inattentional barrier. The information must be meaningful in order to do this
overall conclusions
almost none of the verbal content from a rejected message penetrates a block when attending to another message
important messages like names can penetrate the barrier
a short list of simple words cannot be remembered even when repeated several times
it is difficult to make 'neutral' material (e.g. digits) important enough to break the inattentional barrier
evaluation
which ethical guidelines did Moray uphold?
students had the tasks clearly explained prior to participation
no real stress to the tasks themselves
which ethical guidelines did Moray break and how?
control group not told about digits in experiment 3 (deception)
ethnocentrism
ethnocentric as only conducted in one culture (U.k)
perhaps not ethnocentric as attention is universal
reliability
internal reliability.
external reliability
standardised procedures such as passages used, pace, and voice of speaker
sample sizes very small (unknown, 12 and 28 split into two groups of 14)
validity
internal validity
Controlled (e.g. passages used, pace, and voice of speaker, recognition task in experiment) but results may have been down to understanding of the passages, hearing ability etc and not attention
external validity
population validity
all students from a single area and occupation but both males and females
ecological validity
realistic to hear multiple conversations at once but not isolated, wearing headphones and tested afterwards