Simons & Chabris

• Aim: To investigate the effect of several factors on “Inattentional blindness” Does superimposition compared to live events affect IB? Does the task difficulty affect IB? Does the unusualness of the unexpected event impact how often it is detected?
• Background to study:

  Individuals perceive and remember only those

  objects and details that receive focused attention.

  Inattentional blindness: when attention is diverted to

  another object or task.

  Observers often fail to perceive

  an unexpected object, even if it appears at fixation

  i.e. the harder one has to concentrate, the less likely

  one is to be distracted
• Participants: 228 participants
• IV:) were whether the participant took part in: (i) The Transparent/Umbrella Woman condition, (ii) The Transparent/Gorilla condition, (iii) The Opaque/Umbrella Woman condition. (iv) The Opaque Gorilla condition.
• DV: the number of participants in each of the 16 conditions who noticed the unexpected event (Umbrella Woman or Gorilla)
• Method:

  Told before they’d be watching video of 2 teams passing basketball and should pay attention to either team (Black/White) and keep mental count of passes made by that team.

  told to write down number of passes and then answered additional questions referring to unexpected event

  They were then asked if they had seen something like this video beforehand, if they had, their results were discarded.

  At end, participants debriefed (replayed video on request), with whole session lasting 5-10 mins.