Moray

• Aim: To test for factors that would enable an unattended, dichotically presented messages to be noticed.
• Broadbent (1958)


  Argued that the world is composed of many more sensations than can be handled by the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of the human observer
• To cope with the flood of available information

  Humans must selectively attend to only some information and somehow 'tune out' the rest
• Methods of studying attention


  • Selective attention
  • Divided attention
• Selective attention


  People are presented with two or more simultaneous 'messages', and are instructed to process and respond to only one of them
• Divided attention


  Dual-task technique in which people are asked to attend and respond to both (or all) the messages
• Participants in study 1&2: 12
• IV & DV for study 1

  IV: shadowed message, rejected message & control

  DV: number of words correctly recognised in the rejected message & recognition test
• IV & DV for study 2:

  IV: whether or not instructions were prefixed by participants own name

  DV: number of affective instructions heard
• IV & DV for study 3:

  IV: instructions given -shadowed message/numbers

  DV: number of digits reported
• participants in study 3: 28
• Study 1 method:

  prose in one ear, simple words in the other. Report all words & recognition test.
• Study 2 method:

  10 passages of fiction. 10 different instructions. Some were ‘affective’. How many times instruction was followed was recorded.
• Study 3 method:

  same as study 2, but digits were inserted into messages.