A gorilla can cross the room unseen
When attention is spent on a demanding visual task, a person in a gorilla suit can walk through the scene and about half of viewers do not report it.
Established2 min read
Simons and Chabris asked people to count basketball passes. During the film a gorilla walked to centre court, thumped its chest, and left. Roughly half the counters missed it. The effect is inattentional blindness.
Eye tracking in later versions shows that some missers did look at the gorilla. The photons arrived. The notice did not. Radiologists have missed a gorilla inserted into a lung scan while hunting nodules. Expertise is not immunity.
Caveats
- The miss rate depends on how hard the task is and how similar the unexpected object is to what you are tracking.
Sources
- 1Simons D. J., Chabris C. F.. Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events. Perception 28, 1999.