cognitive area

Question 1

background to Moray’s study

Answer 1

Cherry stated that no matter how deep in conversation you are at a cocktail party, if someone mentioned your name this would draw your attention (cocktail party effect)
Moray wanted to test this to see if your name would indeed break through the barriers put up in the process of focusing attention during a shadowing task

Question 2

what is cocktail party effect

Answer 2

there is a barrier broken when your name is said in a crowded room

Question 3

what is dichotic listening

Answer 3

when headphones are worn by a participant and a different message is played in each ear

Question 4

what is shadowing

Answer 4

when a participant is told to focus on a passage of text whilst dichotically listening and repeat it out loud as they hear it

Question 5

what is affective instructions

Answer 5

when a person is asked to do something preceded by their name being said

Question 6

aim to Moray’s study

Answer 6

test Cherrys findings on the inattentional barrier more thoroughly as he found that people who shadowed one task could recall nothing from the rejected task

Question 7

sample in Moray’s experiment 1

Answer 7

-undergraduate students
-both genders
-Oxford University

Question 8

procedure in Moray’s experiment 1

Answer 8

1) participants shadowed a piece of prose they could hear in 1 ear through Brenell mark tape recorder (attended message) which they completed 4 times before as practise
(speech rate 150 words a minute and male speaker)
2) loudness matched in each ear by participants saying when message appeared to be of equivalent volume to them
3) in other ear a list of words was repeated 35 times (rejected message)
-at the end participants completed a recognition task where they had to indicate what they recognised from a list of 21 words
-7 words were in attended passage, 7 were in rejected and 7 were in neither passage

Question 9

results

Answer 9

mean number of recognised shadowed passage-4.9

rejected passage- 1.9

neither passage - 2.6

Question 10

aim of Moray’s experiment 2

Answer 10

wanted to find out if an affective cue (their name) given alongside instructions, could break inattentional barrier

Question 11

sample of Moray’s experiment 2

Answer 11

-12 undergraduate students
-both genders
-Oxford University

Question 12

what was the independent variable in Moray’s experiment 2

Answer 12

whether an instruction within a rejected message was preceded by the participants name or not

Question 13

what was the dependent variable in Moray’s experiment 2

Answer 13

whether participants were more likely to hear an instruction in a message they’re not paying attention to if its preceded by their name

Question 14

procedure in Moray’s experiment 2

Answer 14

1) participants listened to 2 different passages of light fiction at the same time, shadowing task each time

2) contained an instruction at the start and within them
both passages read in a steady monotone in a male voice at 130 words per minute

3) checked there was no increase in intensity when name spoken

4) participants decieved as they were told to make as little errors in shadowing

some instructions said name, you may stop now and some did not say name
some had no instructions

Question 15

results for Moray’s experiment 2

Answer 15

affective instruction said 39, heard 20
non - affective said 36, heard 4
less than 1% probability due to chance

more likely to hear instruction within passage if given an instruction at the start (pre warning)

Question 16

what was the aim of Moray’s experiment 3

Answer 16

would pre warning break the inattentional barrier

Question 17

sample used in Moray’s experiment 3

Answer 17

two groups of 14
both genders
Oxford University

Question 18

what was the independent variable in Moray’s experiment 3

Answer 18

manipulation of the instructions given to ‘set’ the 2 groups of participants

Question 19

what was the dependent variable in Moray’s experiment 3

Answer 19

how many digits our participants can recall from the rejected message

Question 20

procedure of Moray’s experiment 3

Answer 20

1) 1 group was told they would be asked questions about the shadowed message at the end of each message
2) the other group were specifically told to remember as many of the digits as possible

Question 21

results from Moray’s experiment 3

Answer 21

showed no difference in the mean scores of digits recalled correctly between the 2 set conditions - numbers cannot break through the block on the rejected message

Question 22

background to Loftus and Palmer’s study

Answer 22

Bartlett created widely accepted idea of how the information we take in is affected by already existing schemata representing previous knowledge, however this had critics e.g the data was qualitative

Loftus was interested in the fragility of memory- how easily we can forget information

should eye witness testimony be used in court?

Question 23

what is schema theory

Answer 23

the ability to retain information and to demonstrate this retention of information through behaviour

Question 24

what is reconstructive memory

Answer 24

the way in which our biases and prejudices can unconsciously lead us to have memories of events that are distortions of what actually happened

Question 25

what are leading questions

Answer 25

a question which, by its form or content, suggests what answer is desired

Question 26

aim of Loftus and Palmer's study and sample of experiment 1

Answer 26

to investigate the effect of language on memory 45 participants split into 5 groups of 9

Question 27

what was the dependent variable in Loftus and Palmer's experiment 1

Answer 27

mean estimated speed of car in video per condition - quantitative

Question 28

what were the 5 verbs used for IV in Loftus and Palmer's experiment 1

Answer 28

-smashed -bumped -collided -hit -contacted

Question 29

procedure to Loftus and Palmer's experiment 1

Answer 29

1) students were shown all 7 clips from Evergreen Safety council of the Seattle Police Department. The staged clips lasted between 5 and 30 seconds. 4/7 clips were staged crashes where the speed at which they crashed was known (meaning the accuracy of speed estimates could be measured) 2) after each clip they were given a questionnaire to write an account of what they had seen and answer multiple questions - to avoid demand characteristics 'About how fast were the cars going when they ------- each other' to counteract order effects the groups were presented with a different order of films

Question 30

results

Answer 30

20 mph - 37.7 40 mph - 36.1 smashed - estimate speed of 40.8 contacted - 31.8 results were proved to be significant by a stats test at the p< 0.005

Question 31

sample of Loftus and Palmer's experiment 2

Answer 31

Washington, USA 150 split into 3 groups of 50 students

Question 32

procedure of Loftus and Palmer's experiment 2

Answer 32

stage 1- participants watched a clip of a car crash answered questionnaire (exp 1) verbs= hit/smashed and control group that didn't partake in experiment 1 stage 2- a week later participants returned to answer more questions including 'did you see any broken glass'

Question 33

results for Loftus and Palmer's experiment 2

Answer 33

smashed gave higher speed in mph than hit smashed - 16 remember seeing broken glass hit- 7 remember seeing broken glass control - 6

Question 34

background to Grant Et Al's study

Answer 34

Godden and Baddeley studied the effect of context dependent memory (memory of information is better when tested in the same context) on deep sea divers, they had some divers learn list of words in water and some on land and then had them recall these in water or on land. In matching conditions divers recalled more

Question 35

aim to Grant's study

Answer 35

context dependent memory effects on both recall and recognition tests, as it is said to work better on recall

Question 36

sample and location of Grant's study

Answer 36

17 females 23 males 17-56 years data only analysed for 39 as one guy scored atypically low

Question 37

what sampling method was used in Grant's study

Answer 37

snowball, eight student researchers recruited 5 acquaintances to take part

Question 38

procedure to Grant's study

Answer 38

1) participants read a short article on psychoimmunology (interesting and understandable) 2) either read article in silence or with cafeteria noise played through a casette (both wore headphones) some words were audible 3) they took a 10 question paraphrased recall test and then multiple choice 16 mark recognition test either with noise or silence (followed order of the information in original article) 4) recall taken before recognition to ensure any information recalled was from the reading of article and not the multiple choice test 5) between test and study they had 2 minute break without headphones 6) were debriefed on true purpose of study

Question 39

results to Grant's study

Answer 39

6.7/10 recall silent silent 4.6/10 recall silent study noisy test 14.3/16 recognition silent silent 12.7/16 recognition silent study noisy test no difference in reading time reported between noisy and silent conditions

Question 40

background to Simon and Chabris' study

Answer 40

interested in inattentional blindness- when people fail to see something because they are paying attention to something else investigated by Neisser: in transparent recording, two teams of basketball players appeared, each team passing a ball from one player to the next participants told to focus on white / black team and to press a key when a pass is made 30 seconds into film a woman carrying umbrella walked across screen - most people didn't see woman

Question 41

aim of Simon and Chabris' study

Answer 41

wanted to investigate whether the results from Neisser's research were affected by the way he had made his video (transparent effect) and whether the results would differ for an opaque video with a 5 second unexpected event easy/hard task unusual event/ more usual event

Question 42

sample of Simon and Chabris' study

Answer 42

228 participants students at Harvard University results were only based on data from 192 participants as they had seen video before/ made inaccurate count of passes some were payed, some given candy bars

Question 43

procedure of Simon and Chabris' study

Answer 43

1) each participant watched a short video: -same actors -same location -lasted 75 seconds -players passed ball in consistent order 2) then asked questions about what they had seen 'Did you notice anything unusual while counting' 'Have you seen video before' - data not used the video was either: -opaque or transparent -a woman with umbrella or woman in gorilla costume -counting basketball passes of black/white team -easy task count passes or hard task count aerial and bounce passes 3) debriefed after, watched video again

Question 44

results from Simon and Chabris' study

Answer 44

easy task white team transparent umbrella- 58 noticed (may expect to see woman at basketball but not gorilla) easy task white team transparent gorilla - 8 noticed gorilla noticed more in black condition - similar colours 46% inattentional blindness