ATAR PSYCHOLOGY - Attention Inquiry

Unit 3

intro

Attention is the mental capacity to concentrate on specific stimulus while ignoring other stimuli like a portrait’s sharp focus on a subject, whilst it blurs everything else like the background. But could that focus on the individual’s features be better than on a portrait with the background unblurred? It’s operated through the two types of attention, selective attention, a cognitive mechanism that allows the selection and processing of task relevant information while filtering irrelevant information (Gurvich et al., 2020). (e.g. reading a book outside a balcony and ignoring the sound of traffic.). And divided attention, the ability to process multiple stimuli simultaneously, (e.g. the ability on typing whilst simultaneously monitoring the screen). Attention plays a role in memory, a cognitive function, which information and past experiences are actively processed, stored and retrieved, Cherry (1953) “Cocktail party effect” explored the links between attention and memory. Whereby, Cherry conducted a dichotic listening test, with participants instructed to pick one message and ignore the other. Resulting with the participants successfully recalling the focused message and only described the basic vocal features of the ignored message. Revealing the importance of selective attention on recall and the limitations on divided attention.

method - participants

Population was Year 9 students from St Norbert College the sample was 27 students of a Year 9 Health Education class were used in the study with ages ranged from 14-15. However, three participants did not attend the study so only 24 actively participated

method - materials

Materials

The following materials were used to conduct the experiment:

-       Video

-       Computer

-       Open-ended survey

method - procedure

-       Participants were selected from Year 9 in St Norbert College, with a sample from a Year 9 Health Education class through convenient sampling and were randomly allocated into either the experimental group (divided attention) or the control group (selective attention)

-       In the experiment group, participants were given a prompt for a message they were typing up whilst simultaneously watching/listening to the video

-       In the control group, participants only had to watch the video

-       After the video ended, both groups of participants completed an open-ended survey compromising of 10 qualitative questions about the video

-     The number of correct answers was counted as quantitative subjective data and used to measure the participants average scores.

validity

• The study has moderate internal validity. All participants watched the same video, ensuring consistency in the stimulus. The task was focused on memory recall, aligning with the study’s aim.

• However, confounding variables such as prior knowledge of the video and individual attention differences could have influenced the results. Could be improved by controlling these variables.

 

Reliability

• The reliability of this study is low due to the issue of prior knowledge affecting participants’ memory recall, which compromises test-retest reliability. If the study were repeated with the same participants, their familiarity with the video would influence their recall, leading to inconsistent results.

• Furthermore, the small sample size of 24 participants reduces the consistency of the findings.

• Conducting the study with multiple trials would help assess the repeatability of the results, leading to more reliable outcomes and improve generalisability.

conclusion

The results support the hypothesis, as the control group (selective attention) had an average score of 7/10, while the experimental group (divided attention) scored an average of 4/10. This indicates that selective attention leads to better memory recall than divided attention, confirming the hypothesis.