Moray

Question 1

Background

Answer 1

Cherry’s cocktail party- Cherry found that when we hear two messages simultaneously, we are unable to gather meaning from either message unless their content is distinct.
Moray conducted 3 different experiments to find evidence for this.

Question 2

Aim (expt 1)

Answer 2

Test Cherry’s original results more rigorously.

Question 3

Participants (expt 1)

Answer 3

No number of participants given

Question 4

Method and design, IV and DV (expt 1)

Answer 4

Lab experiment
Repeated Measures Design
IV = message played to shadow/rejected ear (prose passage and list of words respectively)
DV = number of words correctly recalled from rejected message.

Question 5

Materials and Apparatus (all expts)

Answer 5

Brenell Mark IV stereophonic tape recorder.
Modified so that it could be connected to two independent outputs. One output went to each earpiece in the headphones.
Messages in each ear were matched on volume when pp said they were the same volume.
Each pp given 4 practice prose passages to shadow for practice.

Question 6

Procedure (expt 1)

Answer 6

1) passage of prose presented to shadow ear and short list of simple words was presented to rejected ear.
2) ear used for shadowed message = randomly determined.
3) rejected message was faded in after shadowing had begun and was equal in volume to shadowed message. The word list was also faded out before prose passage had finished.
4) word list repeated 35 times.
5) pp unexpectedly asked to recall all they could remember from rejected message. then test of recognition given.
6) 30 sec gap between test of recall and recognition.

Question 7

Results (expt 1)

Answer 7

• 4.9/7 words recalled from shadowed ear (mean)
• 1.9/9 words recalled from rejected ear (mean)
• 2.6/7 words recalled from control list (mean)
  suggests no recall of the words from rejected ear. few words that were recognised was lower than chance recall from control condition.

Question 8

Aim (expt 2)

Answer 8

investigate the extent of the attentional block.

Question 9

Participants (expt 2)

Answer 9

12 pp

Question 10

Method, design IV, DV (expt 2)

Answer 10

Lab experiment
Repeated Measures Design
IV = affective/non affective message ( instructions to rejected ear were prefixed by pp own name)
DV = number of instructions to rejected ear that were responded to.

Question 11

Procedure (expt 2)

Answer 11

1) pp had to shadow 10 paired passages of light fiction.
2) each pp received one passage in their right ear and simultaneously another different passage in their left ear. this happened 10x for each listener.
3) they were told that their responses to the shadowed ear would be recorded and that they would aim to make as few errors as possible. told to ignore rejected ear.

Question 12

Results (expt 2)

Answer 12

the affective instructions presented to rejected ear were heard 20/39 times and non affective 4/36. most pp ignored message in shadowed ear as well as rejected as they thought it was the experimeter trying to distract them.

Question 13

Aim (expt 3)

Answer 13

instruction VIII told pp to change ears in expt 2 and pp more likely to do this than after instruction V. therefore instruction VIII may have created a ‘set’ which increased the liklihood of that the rejected message was detected. therefore expt 3 aimed to investigate effect of set further.

Question 14

Participants (expt 3)

Answer 14

14 pp

Question 15

Method, Design IV and DV (expt 3)

Answer 15

lab experiment
independent measures design
IVs = whether digits were inserted into one or 2 messages
whether pp were told they would be asked qs about just the shadowed message or told to remember all digits they heard.
DV = number of digits correctly recalled.

Question 16

Procedure (expt 3)

Answer 16

1) pp asked to shadow one of two simultaneous dichotic messages.
2) digits were interpolated towards the end of messages. these were sometimes present in both messages or just one.
3) position of numbers was randomly varied.
4) group 1 told they would be asked qs about shadowed content
5) group 2 asked to remember all the digits they could.

Question 17

Results (expt 3)

Answer 17

• no significant difference between number of digits recalled by either group of pp.
• suggests that neutral material doesn’t become important enough to break through attentional barrier even when expectations were increased by telling some pp they had to recall all digits.

Question 18

Conclusions

Answer 18

1) In shadowing task almost none of the rejected message penetrates the block.
2) a rejected message containing a list of short words shows almost no trace of being remembered, even when being repeated over and over again.
3) subjective ‘important’ messages, such as a person’s name can penetrate the block. This means certain instructions are attended to if preceded by the person’s name.
4) very difficult if not impossible to make ‘neutral material’ important enough to break through the block created by dichotic shadowing.

Question 19

Link to cognitive area

Answer 19

Internal mental processes such as memory and attention help us understand human behaviour. This links to Moray’s study as he looked at how attention was impacted by dichotic listening tasks.