Background-Broadbent (1958) argued that humans cope with the flood of available information, by selectively attending to only some information and somehow ‘tune out’ the rest + Cherry’s (1953) method of ‘shadowing’ found participants who shadowed a message presented to one ear were ignorant of the content of a message simultaneously presented to the other ear.
Aim: 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.
Experiment 1: Undergraduates, participants were given four passages of prose to shadow for practice. All passages recorded by one male speaker. A short list of words was presented to the participant’s right ear 35 times a verbal message to the left ear. The participants had to verbally repeat the message in their left ear, out loud.The participant was then asked to report all they could of the content of the rejected message (the list of words).The participant was then given a recognition test where they had a list of words and had to pick the words that they recognised from both the right ear/ left ear. The test included 7 words from the story passage,word list and 7 control words that were not in either the word list or the story passage. The control words were used to ensure that the participants weren’t just making wild guesses about the words they heard. The gap between the end of shadowing and the beginning of the recognition test was about 30 seconds.Results:The difference between the words recalled from the rejected message (word list in the right ear) compared to the verbal message (story message in the left ear) was significant at the 1 per cent. level. Therefore, participants recalled far less words from the rejected message compared to the shadowed message.
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Moray
laboratory experiments 2+3 used an indepedent measures design. Headphones used were Matched for loudness, by asking participants to say when two messages seemed equally loud.
Experiment 2: 12 participants 6 in each condition.One group of participants had instructions with their name, the other group had instructions with no name. Participants listened to two pieces of verbal material in each ear. They had to shadow one of the messages (repeat it out loud). The rejected (non-shadowed) message included instructions for the participant to change ears. Before the listening tasks began, the participants were given the instruction:Listen to your right ear: You will receive instructions to change ears. Participants’ attention was measured by the participant hearing the instruction and then shadowing the message in the ear that they were instructed to change to. Results: The difference between ‘names’ and ‘no names’ was significant at 1 per cent. level. When participants heard their name in the instruction, they were able to follow the instructions 20/39 times. When participants had instructions with no name, they were able to hear and follow the instructions only 4 times.
Experiment 3: 28 participants,14 in each condition.One recieved instructions the other didn't. Participants shadowed one of two simultaneous messages,Digits were inserted to each passage by random. One group of participants was provided no instruction and told that they would be asked about the content of the rejected message at the end, the other group was specifically instructed to remember all the digits that they could. Results: showed no difference in the mean number of digits recalled correctly between the two set conditions, even at the 5% level. numbers are less important than a persons own name, therefore not strong enough to break though the block.
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