Simons And Chabris

Question 1

Simon and Chabris Background

Answer 1

1970s Study by Neisser - Participants shown video which 2 teams of players passed basketballs between one another and then a woman carrying an umbrella walled across the screen between them. 22 out of 28 didn’t see the lady with the umbrella. The video was transparent

Question 2

Aim

Answer 2

Simonsbath and Chabris wanted to investigate whether the results from Neissers research were affected by the way he made his video (overlaying 2 videos giving a transparent effect) and if the same results would be obtained with a more realistic, opaque video.

Question 3

Sample

Answer 3

228 participants from Harvard USA however only 192 participants results were used. These 192 participants were divided into 16 conditions with 12 in each

Question 4

Procedure

Answer 4

Individually, each participant watched a short video, 75 secs, and were then asked what they had seen. There were 16 different videos based around the manipulation of 4 IVs. These were: If the video was transparent or opaque, if the unexpected event in the video was a woman carrying an umbrella or a woman wearing a gorilla costume, if they counted the white or black teams basketball passes and if they counted the number of passes or had to count the different number of aerial or bounce passes. The DV was if they saw the unexpected event.

Question 5

Findings

Answer 5

Participants noticed the unexpected event 54% of the time. On the easy and hard task where participants saw the gorilla on the transparent video while counting the white teams passes, the unexpected event was noticed 8% of the time.
On the easy task where participants saw the umbrella woman on the opaque task while counting the white team, the unexpected event was noticed 100% of the time.
On the hard task where participants saw the umbrella woman on the opaque task while counting the white team, the unexpected event was noticed 83% of the time.

Question 6

Which event were people most likely to notice?

Answer 6

People were most likely to notice the umbrella woman than the gorilla
Umbrella - 65%
Gorilla - 44%
This could be due to the umbrella standing out due to its stature and because people may expect to see a woman more than a gorilla.

Question 7

Were participants more likely to notice the gorilla when the were focusing on the white team or the black team?

Answer 7

People are more likely to see gorilla when focusing on the black team (58%) than the white team (27%). This suggests that the more similar the task, the more likely to notice the event (block out the black shirts when focusing on white team, so may not pay attention to black gorilla)

Question 8

Were participants more likely to notice the unexpected event when they were doing the easy task or the hard task?

Answer 8

More likely to notice event when doing the easy task (64%) compared to the hard event (45%). This suggests that its easier to pay attention when less effort is required for a task.

Question 9

Evaluation - Reliability

Answer 9

External Reliability: 192 participants: large sample, improves reliability as you can establish a trend, only 12 per condition, lowers reliability

Question 10

Evaluation - Validity

Answer 10

Population validity- All participants wrte undergraduate students from Harvard USA - Low pop validity - all from same place, all students eith similar socio-economic backgrounds