simons&chabris

Cards (6)

  • What was the aim?
    To investigate inattentional blindness for complex objects and events in dynamic scenes
  • What was the sample?
    228 ppnts
    gave informed consent
    given a large candy bar or a fee for taking part
  • What was the method?
    Lab experiment
    Independent measures design
    IVs:
    - Unexpected event (gorilla/umbrella)
    - Task difficulty (easy/hard)
    - Team (wearing white/black)
    - Image (transparent/opaque)

    DV: number of ppnts who noticed gorilla or umbrella
  • What was the procedure?
    All ppnts watched a clip
    There were 4 video tapes, each 75 secs long
    The video was of 2 teams of 3 people (one wearing white the other black) they were passing a basketball in a standardised order
    After 44-48 seconds an unexpected event occured
    A woman walked left to right with either an open umbrella or wearing a gorilla costume
    The video was either transparent or opaque with the easy task (count number of passes) or hard task (count number of bounce/chest passes)
    After the experiment ppnts were asked to write down the number of passes and were asked questions such as "Did you notice anything unusual in the video" or "Did you notice anything other than the 6 players"
    Ppnts were then fully debriefed
  • What were the results?
    57% of ppnts noticed the unexpected event, 47% did not
    More ppnts noticed the umbrella condition than the gorilla (65% vs 44%)
    Unexpected event noticed more in the easy task
    Unexpected event noticed more in the opaque condition
    Task difficulty was more significant in the transparent condition
    Gorilla was noticed more in the black team condition
  • What were the conclusions?
    People experience inattentional blindness for dynamic events (people fail to notice the obvious yet unexpected event when doing a motoring task)
    The extent of inattentional blindness is dependent on the difficulty of the primary task
    Without attention we have no conscious perception