That Was No Gorilla, That Was My Inattentional Blindness

If you were watching a basketball game and someone in a gorilla costume stomped across the court pounding his chest, you'd notice, wouldn't you?

According to psychologist Dan Simons, there's only a 50% chance you would!

It's called "inattentional blindness" or "change blindness" - being too focused to see things right in front of our eyes.

According to a fascinating article in "The Carleton Voice," by Jack El-Hai, when Simons had subjects watch a basketball video and told them to count the number of players' passes, half of them didn't notice when the gorilla walked across.

"We have to rewind the tape to show them [the gorilla]," said Simons. "That's what I find most interesting about all this - the size of the errors we can make. We really believe that something important will attract our attention much of the time."

The article continues to describe another experiment not unlike candid camera:

"A member of Simons' team approaches someone on the street and asks for directions," says El-Hai. "As the subject begins to speak, a crew of faux workers carrying a door abruptly squeezes between the two. As the door passes between them, the person who asked for directions changes places with a third person." Again, 50% didn't notice they were giving directions to a different person.

Same thing happened when they had a waiter duck behind the counter and a new waiter popped up. The diner kept on talking.

"We have limited attentional resources," concluded Simons. What we notice depends on how much else we're attending to, and this was true even when the subject claimed to have great visual memory.

"Practical applications of Simon's work would be airline and highway safety," says El Hai. Scary thought.

Another application - watch it with the cell in the car! We have limited attentional resources.