In an experiment by Moray (1970), people detected signals consisting of small increases in the intensities of pure tones presented to one or both ears. Detection performance was poorer when tones were presented to both ears and was particularly bad when two signals occurred simultaneously. Moray argued that these results were most consistent with:

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The Moray (1970) study explored how well people could detect subtle tone signals when those signals were presented under different auditory conditions. The core finding was that detection performance dropped when tones were delivered to both ears, and especially when two signals occurred at the same time. This pattern points to attention acting as a selective filter that operates early in processing, limiting what reaches higher-level processing when competing inputs are present.

Option 1: None of the options. This would be correct only if none of the theories matched the data, but the results do align with a well-known attention account, so this is not accurate.

Option 2: An early-selection theory of attention. This interpretation fits the data because the impairment in detecting signals with competing inputs suggests that selection occurs before deep processing of the stimuli, implying a bottleneck early in perceptual processing.

Option 3: A late-selection theory of attention. A late-selection account would argue that all inputs are processed to a similar level of analysis before selection occurs at a later stage. The pronounced difficulty with simultaneous and bilateral presentation conflicts with this view, which would predict more uniform processing regardless of initial input competition.

Option 4: A feature-integration theory of attention. This theory concerns how features are bound together into objects and explains tasks involving visual search and feature conjunctions. It does not directly address dichotic listening and early vs. late selection of auditory information, making it a poor fit for Moray's findings.

PSYC20007_2025_SM2 Supplementary or Special Exam: Cognitive Psychology (PSYC20007_2025_SM2)- Requires Respondus LockDown Browser

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