Moray

• aim of morays study

  to investigate factors influencing the amount of information recognised in an unattended message
• method of morays study

  3 lab experiment
• sample/ participants in morays study

  -male and female

  -undergraduates and research workers

  -experiment 2, 12 ppts

  -experiment 3, 14 ppts
• sampling bias of morays study

  -small sample, undergraduates (unrepresentative)

  -male and femal

  -self selected
• procedure of experiment 1 moray

  -short list of simple words repeatedly presented in one ear whilst ppts shadowed a prose message presented to the other ear

  -word list repeated 35 times, faded in after shadowing began and faded out as message ended

  -ppts asked to report all the words they could remember of the rejected message

  -then given a recognition test that included words from the shadowed message
• results of experiment 1 moray

  -no evidence of words from the rejected message being recognised, info in the unattended ear does not break the attention barrier

  -1.9/7 words remembered from rejected message

  -4.9/7 words from shadowed message

  -2.6/7 for first time in recognition test
• ethnocentrism of morays study

  -undergraduates from the same uni

  -differences found between languages (monolingual english speakers had right ear advantage over bilingual)

  -finish and swedish performed better
• procedure of experiment 2 moray

  -ppts shadowed 10 short passages of light fiction and asked to make few mistakes as possible

  -instructions were inserted into the non-attended ear either at the start of the passage or both

  in 6 of the passages, instructions were given within the passage (half of those were prefixed by the ppts own name)
• practical applications of morays study

  -improving attention

  -testing coma patients

  -understanding children's hearing impairments
• reliability of morays study

  -good controls eg, same persons voice and standardised procedures (numbers at same place)
• results of experiment 2 moray

  -presence of name caused the instructions to be heard (only on 4 occasions the ppts followed the instruction to change to the other message)

  -20/39 heard the instruction
• procedure of experiment 3 moray

  -2 groups of 14 ppts shadowed one of two simultaneous dichotic messages

  -in some of the messages digits were inserted towards the end of the message (these were presented in both messages, sometimes only in one, position of numbers in the message and controls with no numbers were randomly inserted)

  -one group of ppts told they would be asked questions about the content of the shadowed message at the end of each message, the other group instructed to remember the numbers
• type of data in morays study

  -quantitative, the number of words recognised etc,
• research method used in morays study

  - 3 lab experiments

  -controls + standardised procedures

  -may have demand characteristics
• results of experiment 3 moray

  -difference between mean number of digits reported under the two conditions was not statistically significant

  -therefore, even when alerted to the possibility of hearing digits ppts perception was not effected
• ethics of morays study

  no ethical issues
• conclusions of morays study

  -a short list of simple words presented as the rejected message shows no trace of being recalled even presented many times
• validity of morays study

  -internal validity good

  -external validity poor, although fiction paragraphs could increase realism of the experiment
• how does morays study link to the cognitive area

  Investigates the cognitive process of attention - specifically, whether (and what types of) material could break through the attentional barrier set up when a person focuses