Moray (1958) - Study on Auditory Attention

What is the aim of the study?

To test Cherry's research on dichotic listening findings (the cocktail party effect) to:

1. The amount of information recognised in the rejected message

2. The effect of hearing one's own name in the unattended message

3. The effect of instructions to identify a specific target in the rejected message

What is the experiment type?

Lab experiment

What is the IV for experiment 1?

The dichotic listening test, the recognition test

What is the DV for experiment 1?

Number of words recognised correctly in the rejected message (word list)

What experimental design is used for experiment 1?

Repeated measures

What was the procedure for experiment 1?

List of words repeated 35 times in one ear (“rejected message” as they were told not to focus on it), prose message (story- “shadowed message”) in other ear, which participants repeated out loud as they heard it

What are the results for experiment 1 (mean)

Shadowed message- 4.9/7 words remembered

Rejected message- 1.9/7 remembered

What was the IV for experiment 2?

Was the participant's name included?

What was the DV for experiment 2?

Number of affective instructions (included participant's name)

What was the experimental design for experiment 2?

Repeated measures

What was the procedure for experiment 2?

Participant's shadowed 10 prices of prose writing, some passages included instructions with/without their name

What are the results for experiment 2?

Affective (includes name) - 20/39 remembered

Non-affective - 4/36

What was the IV for experiment 3?

Digits in one message/both?, answer questions/remember numbers

What was the DV for experiment 3?

Number of digits correctly reported

What was the experimental design for experiment 3?

Independent measures

What was the procedure for experiment 3?

Participants shadowed one of the two simultaneous dichotic messages, one group was a war they would be questioned, the other wasnt

What was the result for experiment 3?

No difference between number of digits recalled by either group

Who were the participants?

1. No information recorded

2. 12 - men and women

3. 28 (2 groups of 14) - men and women

What are the conclusions?

1- (almost) none of the verbal content of rejected message is able to break the attentional barrier

1- a short list of words presented as the rejected message shows no trace of being remembered, even when repeated many times

2- hearing your own name can break the attentional block

3- digits cannot break the attentional barrier