Moray

Background

Cherry (1953) The 'cocktail party phenomenon' - the ability to selectively attend to one conversation out of many.

Dichotic listening

Listening to a shadowed and rejected message

Experiment 1 IV

Shadowed (prose) and rejected message (repeated list of words 35x)

Experiment 1 DV

Number of words recognised correctly in the rejected message.

Experiment 2 IV

Whether or not instructions in rejected message were prefixed with ppt's own name (affective/non-affective)

Experiment 2 DV

Number of instructions recalled

Experiment 3 IV

Whether ppts were told to listen out for numbers or just told they would be questioned on shadowed message

Experiment 3 DV

Number of digits recalled

Experiment 1 results

Mean no. of words recognised was: Shadowed message - 4.9; Rejected message - 1.9, and words not from either - 2.6.

Experiment 2 results

Affective instructions (with their name) 20/39 messages were heard where as in the non-affective instructions only 4/36 were heard

Experiment 3 results

No significant difference between the two groups

Experiment 1 sample

Unknown number of students/researchers

Experiment 2 sample

12 students/researchers

Experiment 3 Sample

28 students/researchers

Experiment 1 Conclusion

we create an attentional block for the rejected message during dichotic listening tasks, almost none of the verbal content of the rejected message is able to get through this block

Experiment 2 Conclusion

'important' messages, such as our own name can penetrate the attentional block

Experiment 3 Conclusion

It is almost impossible to make 'neutral' material (e.g. numbers) important enough to break through the attentional block

Apparatus

Tape recorder where volume could be adjusted for each ear

Research method

Lab experiment

A control

Participants could alter the volume so each side was equally loud