Summary of the Study
Background
Aim
Method
Sample
Design & Procedure
CONCLUSIONS:
Simons and Chabris concluded that roughly half of observers will fail to detect an ongoing, unusual and unexpected event while engaged in a different task of visual attention. Their findings suggest that:
- Change blindness: the phenomena of being unaware of significant changes in our environment from one view to the next
- Inattentional blindness: the phenomena of failing to perceive an unexpected object even at the point of fixation
Aim
- To investigate the influence of several factors on inattentional blindness:
- the effect of superimpositions compared to live events within the video recording
- measuring the impact of task difficulty
- whether the unusualness of the unexpected event had an impact on detection rates
Method
- Laboratory experiment
- Independent measures design, Ps taking part in only 1/16 different conditions
Sample
- 228 Ps
- Volunteer sample
- Most were undergraduate students who were offered a reward of a candy bar or a single fee for taking part in this % other studies
Design & Procedure
- Researchers created 4 video tapes using the same camera, each lasting 75 seconds
- Each tape showed two teams of 3 players, one team wearing white shirts and the other wearing black shirts
- The members of each team moved randomly around a small space, passing an orange basketball to one another in a set order, either as an aerial pass or a pass with a bounce
- 21 experimenters tested the Ps individually
- Standardised script to deliver instructions on the task and carefully followed a written protocol outlining how and when to present the video and collect data for each trial
- Videos were presented on TV monitors ranging in size between 13 - 36 inches
- After performing the task, observers were immediately asked to write down their count passes, then verbally answered a surprise set of questions:
- While you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual?
- Did you notice anything other than the six players?
- Did you see anyone else (besides the six players) appear on the video?
- Did you see a gorilla [woman carrying an umbrella] walk across the screen?
- Details of any ‘yes’ responses were noted
- Observers were then asked whether they had previously heard of or participated in an experiment such as this
- The Ps were debriefed and were given the opportunity to re-watch the video
- Some Ps’ data had to be discarded for a no. of reasons (e.g. Ps admitted to having heard of inattentional blindness, or that they had lost count of the no. of passes).
- The remaining 192 Ps were distributed equally across the 16 conditions of the 2x2x2x2 design (12 per condition)
- 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to notice the unexpected event
- This key finding supports existing research findings, with Ps demonstrating a substantial level of inattentional blindness for a dynamic event
- Ps were more likely to notice the unexpected event in the opaque condition (67%) compared to the transparent condition (42%)
- However, this still lives a significant proportion of Ps in the opaque condition who failed to detect the event
- As expected, more Ps noticed the unexpected event in the Easy (64%) than in the Hard (45%) condition
- More Ps noticed the umbrella women (65%) than the gorilla (44%)
- When Ps were attending to the black team, they were, however, more likely to notice the gorilla than when attending to the white team: 58% vs 27% respectively
- By contrast, there was little difference in how many Ps noticed the umbrella woman (62% when monitoring the black team; 69% when monitoring the white team)
- Instead of the gorilla being noticed for standing out against the white team members, it appears the individuals are more likely to notice an unexpected event that shares basic visual features with the object they are observing (e.g. similar colours)
CONCLUSIONS:
Simons and Chabris concluded that roughly half of observers will fail to detect an ongoing, unusual and unexpected event while engaged in a different task of visual attention. Their findings suggest that:
- Inattentional blindness occurs more frequently in cases of superimposition as opposed to live action, but is still a feature of both
- The degree of inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the primary task, and is more likely when the primary task is hard
- Observers are more likely to notice unexpected events if these events are visually similar to the events they are paying attention to
- Objects can pass through the spatial area of attentional focus and still not be ‘seen’ if they are not specifically being attended to
Lesson Materials can be found here
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