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Simons and Chabris (1999) - Coggle Diagram
Simons and Chabris (1999)
Sample
228 participants (mostly students at Harvard University). However, data from 36 was not analysed for a range of resone (like participants being aware of the concept of inattentional blindness), meaing results were based on data frim a sample of 192 participants (12 per condition).
Aims
They wanted to investigate whether the results frim Neisser’s research were affected by the way he had made his video (the transparent effect) or whether the same results would be obtained from a more opaque video.
They also wanted to investigate the effect of other factors: the nature of the unexpected event, what the participants were told to focus on, the difficulty of the task theh were given while watching the video.
Background
Simons and Chabris were interested in inattentional blindness. This had originally been investigated by Neisser in the 1970s, with participants being shown a video where two teams if players passed basketballs between them and then a woman with an umbrella walked across the screen. Neisser found that 22 out of 28 participants failed to see the woman.
The video was made by overlaying three separately filmed videos on top of one another. The three videos were; the black-shirted team passing a ball between them, the white-shirted team, and the woman carrying an umbrella walking across the screen. These videos together created a transparent effect.
Procedure
Each participant watched a short video (75 secs) and was then asked questions about what they saw. Participants were in one of 16 different conditions based around manipulation of four independent variables:
The video was either opaque or transparent in appearance
The 'unexpected event' in the video was either a woman carrying an umbrella of a woman wearing a gorilla costume
Participants were told to count the basketball passes of either the team wearing black shirts or the team wearing white
Participants were told to count the basketball passes of either the team wearing black shirts or the team wearing white shirts
The dependent variable was whether they reported seeing the unexpected event or not
Conclusion
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.
Results
video appearance
opaque
66.5% saw the unexpected event
transparent
41.6% saw the unexpected event
the event
woman with umbrella
65.5% saw the unexpected event
gorilla
42.6% saw the unexpected event
similarity of task
black team
67% saw the unexpected event
white team
8% saw the unexpected event
difficulty of task
easy
63.5% saw the unexpected event
hard
44.6% saw the unexpected event
Evaluation
external reliability
The sample size overall (228) is large enough to establish a consistent effect but the number in each condition (12) is not large enough.
population validity
The sample was mainly students from Harvard so not very generalisable to other groups (e.g older individuals may have lower attention levels).
links to debates
usefulness
Can be used by teachers to aid the attention of students by altering the task and stimuli presented to them.
holism
Investigated multiple factors influencing attention such as task difficulty, task similarity, video transparency and the unexpected event itself.
determinism
The attention of the participants was determined by the task and video presented to them.
similarities and differences between Moray and S&C
similarities
both included deception
both lab experiments
both had students within their sample
differences
different experimental designs