Interesting psychology experiment

[stormtreader]

Watch the film and count the number of times the students pass a basketball.
The film clip is 7MB so it may be a bit slow loading.

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

Highlight below when you have an answer:







Did you notice the guy in the gorilla suit?

[AFpheonix]

Wierdly, yes. I counted 28 passes, too.

So do I get a cookie?

[stormtreader]

Yes you do (:.) <-chocolate chip
I was astonished when i watched it again, i didnt see it AT ALL the first time

[thegiraffe]

We watched that in my perception class this semester. When more people have answered, I'll provide an explanation (so I don't spoil the fun).

[Cia]

I counted 25 or 26 passes.

[Ljt09863]

i counted 32, but i think i messed up. weirdly enough, i had messed up because i thought, (*spoiler...highlight to view -->)"hey, that guy is in a gorrila suit..."

[thegiraffe]

Well since the 'secret' has been given away lol (it's all good Ljt)...I'll explain it. (*spoiler...highlight to view -->)

Our perceptual system is based on attention. We only percieve what we can pay attention to (hence the lack of support for subliminal advertising, etc). Because we're so intent on counting the basketballs, the guy in the gorilla suit becomes essentially 'invisible' to us. We don't even notice it.

This phenomenon is called 'inattentional blindness'. Essentially, we're "blind" to that which we aren't paying attention to. It's quite interesting actually. To think that we missed something like a giant gorilla (and yes - the ENTIRE class missed it the first time!) dancing in the middle of quite the complex basketball passing game is fascinating....or it is to me at least lol. It's basically a failure of the visual system with regards to awareness. Pretty cool stuff!

[Cia]

(*spoiler...highlight to view -->)I did see the gorilla guy - he just sorta appeared and then disappeared.

[Ljt09863]

i didn't even realize what i had typed......but hey...shouldn't people check out what was going on in the video first??? j/k. im really sorry. i wasn't even paying attention when i wrote that. its been a REALLY long week. just don't throw potatoes at me please.

*EDIT - It's all good. I edited so people have to highlight the posts to view the secret. ~Ree

[stormtreader]

Lol, no need to stress Ljt, we'll let you live this once
Thats actually why i put in a load of white space around the answer, to try and not have peoples replies on the screen for new readers

[symposes]

The first time i saw something like this.
it was 4 people passing 2 lunch boxes back and forth while square dancing.
(*spoiler...highlight to view -->)It was a guy in a bee suit, and i didnt see him the first time. it was creepy.
Thing is i knew this was going to be something like that, so instead of counting basket ball passes, i was watching for the guy in the gorilla suit.

[Antisocial_Worker]

Sorry... I couldn't take the test. I'd already been ruined to it because I heard about this very experiment when one of the characters on CSI mentioned it years ago. I wonder if I'd have been able to notice it otherwise, but when you're expecting it... bleh.