Simons and Chabris

• Moray previously researched auditory attention, Simons and Chabris wanted to look at visual attention, particularly inattentional blindness. This is when attention is diverted so observers fail to notice an unexpected object.
• Mack and Rock investigated computer based displays where participants were given a task to complete then were presented with an unexpected object, such as a smiley face, which the participants failed to notice. However this was criticised for not being representative of visual attention in real life.
• Neisser used video based displays where participants watched players playing basketball and where told to count the number of passes. A woman with an umbrella would walk across the screen and the majority of participants failed to see her. However, they had used a low quality video.
• Simons and Chabris aimed to investigate whether particularly unusual events are less likely to be noticed, to investigate whether a more difficult tasks increases inattentional blindness and to investigate whether video quality impacts inattentional blindness.
• Simons and Chabris studied 192 undergraduate students who were collected via volunteer sampling.
• Participants were tested alone and given instructions to count the number of passes that the basketball players made. They were either in the easy condition (number of overall passes) or the hard condition (number of bounce and aerial passes) of either the black team or the white team. Whilst watching the video either a woman with an umbrella or a gorilla would walk across the screen, the video was either transparent or opaque. Afterwards the participants were asked if they noticed anything unusual and were asked to provide details.
• Overall 54% of the participants noticed the unexpected event. More people noticed the lady with the umbrella than the gorilla. More people noticed the unexpected event in the easy condition than the hard. More people noticed the unexpected event in the opaque condition.
• Simons and Chabris concluded that people are more likely to notice and unexpected events if they are visually similar to what they are paying attention to. Inattentional blindness is more likely when the task is hard and occurs more frequently in the case of superimposition (transparent).