moray

• What were the aims?

  Experiment 1: To test Cherry's dichotic listening in relation to the amount of information recognised in the rejected message

  
  

  Experiment 2: To test Cherry's dichotic listening in relation to the effect of hearing one's own name in the rejected message

  
  

  Experiment 3: To test Cherry's dichotic listening in relation to the effect of instructions to identify a specific target in the rejected message
• What were the samples?

  All experiments had all male and female undergraduates/ research workers

  Experiment 1: not recorded

  Experiment 2: 12 ppnts

  Experiment 3: 2 groups of 14 ppnts
• What were the methods?

  All were lab experiments using the repeated measures design

  The apparatus used was a stereophonic tape recorder

  Loudness was matched by asking ppnts when 2 messages were of equal volume

  
  

  Experiment 1:

  IV- dichotic listening task, recognition task

  DV- the amount of words correctly recalled from rejected message

  
  

  Experiment 2:

  IV- Whether or not the ppnts name was said

  DV- number of affective instructions

  
  

  Experiment 3:

  IV- if digits were said in one or both messages, if ppnts were told they had to answer questions ab the shadowed message or just had to remember as many digits as they could

  DV- number of digits correctly recalled
• What were the procedures?

  Ppnts were given 4 prose passages to shadow as practice

  All the passages were spoken by a male voice

  
  

  Experiment 1:

  - A short list of words was repeated 35 times in one ear, whilst the ppnts shadowed a prose message from the other ear

  - 30 secs later ppnts were asked to recall the words

  
  

  Experiment 2:

  - Ppnts were asked to shadow 10 passages of fiction

  - They were told "Listen to your right ear, you will receive instructions to change ears"

  - 6 of 10 passages were "change ear"- half of these were prefixed with the ppnts name

  
  

  Experiment 3:

  - 2 groups were told to shadow one of 2 simultaneous dichotic messages

  - The digits were presented at the end in either one or both messages

  - Ppnt were either told they had to asnwer questions about the passage or just to remember as many digits as they could
• What were the results?

  Experiment 1: there was no trace of the words being remembered from the rejected message when the short word list was presented

  
  

  Experiment 2: Ppnt responded to instructions 20 of 30 times when the name was prefixed and 4 of 36 times when the name was not said in the rejected message

  
  

  Experiment 3: No significant difference in the number of digits recalled in both conditions
• What were the conclusions?

  When a person is focused on one ear, none of the verbal information from the rejected message will be able to penetrate the block

  The rejected message shows no trace of being remembered when presented multiple times

  Subjectively important information such as a person's name will break the block

  It is very difficult to make neutral information important enough to break the block