Simons and Chabris - These templates can be filled in as part of your revision because they include PDF

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Cognitive Area: Simons and Chabris (1999) - Inattentional Blindness Background information Research has shown that we do not visually perceive everything in our environment all of the time. Magicians use this to perform visual illusions. This happens because individuals cannot give equal attention to every single detail within our visual field. Neisser et al. devised a divided-visual-attention task in which two observers viewed superimposed videotapes of two teams playing a ball-passing game. Observers had to watch one team and ignore the other and after a short time, a woman carrying an open umbrella would walk across the screen. The video carried on once she had left the screen. Only 6 out of the 28 observers noticed her. Wolfe explained this through something through inattentional amnesia. Becklen and Cervone performed a similar task but included a condition where the video was stopped immediately after the umbrella woman left the screen. Inattentional Blindness: when we are attentive to another object or task, failing to perceive an unexpected object, even if it appears right in front of us. Superimposition: where someone will put a picture or a video on top of another. Aim To investigate the influence of several factors on inattentional blindness. Looking at the effect of superimposition compared to live events within the video recording; Measure the impact of task difficulty; Consider whether the unusualness of the unexpected event had an impact of detection rates. Participants / sample (who they were) There were 228 participants gathered using volunteer sampling. Most of the observers were undergraduate students and they participated in the experiment. Each observer either volunteered to participate without compensation, received a large candy bar or paid a single fee for participating in a larger testing session including another, unrelated experiment. How the sample was recruited The sample were recruited using volunteer sampling. Most participants were undergraduate students so we can assume that they volunteered from their university and it was advertised at their university. Research method / research design This was primarily a laboratory experiment and used independent measures design. It mainly took place in a laboratory so was very controlled and it was independent measures design because participants only took part in one of the 16 different situations. Independent variables The independent variables were the conditions that the participants took part in. There were 16 different combinations that they could be in. They could take part in the transparent/umbrella woman condition, the transparent/gorilla condition, the opaque/umbrella woman condition or the opaque/ gorilla condition. These were also in the condition of either easy or hard and black or white, giving 16 different conditions in total. For the easy condition, participants had to keep a mental note of the passes made in their team but for the hard condition, they had to keep a separate mental note of the number of aerial passes and bounce passes made on their team. For the transparent condition, the black team, white team and unexpected event were recorded separately and superimposed on top of each other but for the opaque condition, all were recorded at the same time. Dependent variables What: The dependent variable was the number or participants in each of the 16 conditions who noticed the unexpected event (umbrella woman or gorilla). This was measured by testing all the participants by showing them the video of their group then asking them 3 questions; did you notice anything unusual? Did you notice anything other than the 6 players? Did you see the gorilla/umbrella woman walk across the screen?

Materials (the videos) 4 videos were shown for 75 seconds each. Each tape showed two teams of 3 players (white and black) who moved around passing a ball in a random fashion. All included the same actors, the same location and were recorded on the same day. They would not directly look at the camera. After 44-48 seconds, the unexpected event would occur. This lasted for 5 seconds and the players continued their actions during and after the event. Control condition description of procedure Each video was 75 seconds long; all had the same amount of players on each team; all involved playing basketball; all included the same actors and same location; all were filmed on the same day; all had the same type of basketball; same order of passes; same type of passes; no-one looked directly, purposefully at the camera; the unexpected event occurred within the same time frame; the unexpected event always lasted for 5 seconds; all filmed with the same camera; all digitalized and edited by the same system; all asked the same questions at the end. Procedure (what participants had to do - step by step) All participants were tested individually and gave informed consent in advance. They were first told that they would be watching two teams of three playing basketball and that they should pay attention to one of the two teams (black/white). They were told to either mentally remember the number of passes or the number of bounce passes and aerial passes (easy/hard). Each participant only took part in one condition out of the 16. After viewing the video and performing their task, they were asked to immediately write down their counted passes and had to answer 3 questions. If they said ‘yes’ to any question then they had to give detail. If they mentioned the unexpected event then the remaining questions were skipped. They were then asked if they had participated in an experiment like this before or if they had heard of an experiment like this before. If they answered ‘yes’ then they were replaced and their data was discarded. They were then debriefed. Each test lasted between 5 and 10 minutes. 21 experimenters tested the participants and to ensure uniformity they were taught how to act before they began. Results 36 participant’s results were discarded because:  14 knew about inattentional blindness  9 lost count of passes  7 counted inaccurately  5 did not answer clearly so they couldn’t be interpreted  1 of their pass counts was more than 3 SD away from the mean The remaining 192 participants were split into the 16 conditions with 12 in each group in a 2x2x2x2 design. Main study Looking at the effect of superimposition compared to live events within the video recording. Participants noticed the unexpected event more in the opaque condition than the transparent condition as 67% of participants noticed it in the opaque condition but only 42% noticed it in the transparent condition. 33% in the opaque condition failed to report the event and 58% in the transparent condition. Secondly was to measure the impact of task difficulty. More participants noticed the event in the easy condition (64%) than the hard condition (45%). There was also a greater difficulty effect in the transparent condition (Easy 56%, Hard 27% per condition) than in the opaque condition (Easy 71%, Hard 62% per condition). Thirdly was to measure the impact of black vs white. The gorilla was noticed more by the participants who were to watch the black team than those who had to watch the white team (black 58%, white 27% per condition). There was very little difference between those watching the black team and those watching the white team in noticing the umbrella woman (black 62%, white 69% per condition).

Conclusions Overall, about half of observers will fail to detect ongoing, unusual and unexpected events while engaging in different visual attention tasks. Inattentional blindness occurs more frequently with superimposition than live action. The degree of the inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the task and observers ae more likely to notice unexpected events if these events are visually similar to what they are paying attention to. Objects can pass through the spatial area and not be seen if they are not being attended to. This all proves that there is no perception without attention. Evaluation (add context to your point) Strength

Research Method

Data Type

Validity

Reliability

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Laboratory experiment Highly controlled Standardised Replicable Controlled extraneous variables

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Could be demand characteristics Could be social desirability bias

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Quantitative data collected Easy to summarise Comparable Plenty of data collected Easy to repeat

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No qualitative data Doesn’t say why participants think they saw it/didn’t see it

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Concurrent validity Increased ecological validity High internal validity

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May have already seen the video Lacks population validity Lacks ecological validity Demand characteristics

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Highly controlled Laboratory experiment Replicable Consistent findings Large enough sample was used Independent measures so less demand characteristics No chance of boredom

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Some participant’s data was not included and a large number as well Not like real life One event more realistic than another Unreal situation

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How it is

Ethical Issues?

Weakness

    

Informed consent Debrief Confidentiality Right to withdraw Protection of participants

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How it isn’t 

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Deception on the participants behalf if they had seen the video or knew the experiment Some deception but part of the experiment

   Sampling Bias

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Good size sample Both genders used Equal number of participants in each sample Representative of undergrads Quick and easy to achieve Large sample at the start

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   Ethnocentrism

Everyone can use attention Can develop from birth Cognitive processes depend upon the physiognomy of our brain so they are investigating a species-specific behaviour

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Not many people in each condition in the end Unequal gender ratio Gender could have made a difference in attention Participant variables Not all original data is comparable to end results Lost a lot of original sample Only looks at undergraduates Cognitive processes depend on physiognomy Attention can change with culture

How does Simons and Chabris link to the key theme of responses to people in authority Attention is the process of directing and focusing certain psychological resources to enhance perception, performance and mental experience. It is something that we all biologically possess and with time our attention develops and becomes better. We use our five senses to seek information. Attention can only last a certain amount of time, and research has shown that our attention can only deal with a certain amount of information to be processed at any one time. Simons and Chebris were investigating several factors that may have an effect on inattentional blindness. They were looking at the differences between superimposition and live videos, the task difficulty, the type of unexpected event and the colour of the team they were watching. They wanted to see what would have the largest effect on inattentional blindness. Results show that there is quite a large difference between live videos and superimpositioned videos as 67% of participants noticed the unexpected event in the opaque video but only 42% noticed it in the transparent condition. Also, difficulty and colour of what you are watching does also matter. Plus, the type of unexpected event will also make a difference. How does Simons and Chabris link to the social area The cognitive area attempts to explain human behaviour by focusing on our internal mental processes and how they influence our behaviour. Internal mental processes are simply the things that we do in our head such as memory, thinking, reasoning, problem solving and language. Simons and Chebris were investigating several factors that may have an effect on inattentional blindness. They were looking at the differences between superimposition and live videos, the task difficulty, the type of unexpected event and the colour of the team they were watching. They wanted to see what would have the largest effect on inattentional blindness. Results from the cognitive area show that selective attention and unexpected events can break the attentional barrier but it can also be completely missed if a person focuses their visual attention on a different feature of visual effect. This is the inattentional blindness, as they are not purposefully ignoring it, they haven’t noticed it. To what extent does the contemporary study change our understanding of the key theme: The key theme states that attention means processing the information around us and it also states that we can actively select information and pay more attention towards certain pieces of information. Simons and Chabris’ study changes our understanding on this because it proves that we don’t always notice all of the information around us and also that we can’t always pay attention to what we want to see as we don’t always recognise other events going on around us. Therefore, this study extends the principle that we can miss events that we aren’t paying attention to. To what extent does the contemporary study change our understanding of individual, social and

cultural diversity

Individual

Social

Cultural

The contemporary study does allow us to see how individuals process stimulus in their environment differently and this results in individual differences in the ability to pay attention to background stimuli. This extends the classic research into auditory information to visual information also. Some individuals are more likely to be affected by inattentional blindness than others. Both pieces of research utilise students for their sample and therefore may not explain groups in society who do not share characteristics that are similar to these. The contemporary study studied participants from Harvard university which allowed research to be applied to American culture as well as English culture that was previously studied by Moray. However, other studies are not included in either study which limits their representativeness....