This is a fun little study. The instructions are embedded in the video.
Did you get it right? Have you seen this study before?
It's based on an experiment by Daniel Simons. You can find another demonstration here.
Cognitive Daily
A new cognitive psychology article nearly every day
Profile
Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
Greta Munger is Professor of Psychology at Davidson College whose works include The History of Psychology: Fundamental Questions. Dave Munger is co-founder and editor of ResearchBlogging.org and a columnist on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. And yes, he is married to Greta.
Recent Posts
- Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer, and what motivates them?
- Detecting faces: People use some of the same strategies computers do
- Men often treat their friends better than women do
- Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer?
- The long-term effects of day care
- Deep brain stimulation for clinical depression?
- Do chimps understand what Jon Stewart (or another chimp) believes?
- What's the best way to take a study break?
- Can artificial sweeteners really help us lose weight?
- Anime film characters: Do we perceive the intended race, or our own?
Recent Comments
- aty on Men often treat their friends better than women do
- Arun on High IQ: Not as good for you as you thought
- namran on Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer, and what motivates them?
- Greg Shenaut on Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer, and what motivates them?
- Hello Yo on High IQ: Not as good for you as you thought
- CB on Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer, and what motivates them?
- jeff m on Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer, and what motivates them?
- lylebot on Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer, and what motivates them?
- KGH on Casual Fridays: What makes a good writer, and what motivates them?
- RR on Few listeners can distinguish between "average" and "best" MP3 samples
Search
Categories
- Analysis
- Ask a ScienceBlogger
- Casual Fridays
- Cognitive Monthly
- Fun and games
- General / Site news
- In other news
- News
- Opinion
- Podcasts
- Research
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
Blogs
- A Blog Around The Clock
- Action Potential
- The Anterior Commisure
- Babel's Dawn
- BPS Research Digest
- A Brain in a Vat
- Brainethics
- Brains
- Channel N
- Cognition and Language Lab
- Collision Detection
- The Corpus Callosum
- The Dana Press Blog
- Developing Intelligence
- Eide Neurolearning Blog
- The Frontal Cortex
- GNIF Brain Blogger
- Issues in the Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science
- Just Noticeable Differences
- Madam Fathom
- Memoirs of a Postgrad
- Mind Hacks
- MindBlog
- Mixing Memory
- Music Matters
- Musical Perceptions
- Neurevolution
- The Neurocritic
- Neurodudes
- Neuroethics & Law Blog
- Neurofuture
- Neuromarketing
- Neuronerd
- Neurontic
- Neurophilosophy
- Neurotopia (version 2.0)
- Not Exactly Rocket Science
- Of Two Minds
- The Other 95%
- Peer-to-Peer
- Peripersonal Space
- The Phineas Gage Fan Club
- PsyBlog | Psychology Blog
- Pure Pedantry
- Retrospectacle
- Science & Consciousness Review
- SCLin's neuroscience blog
- Small Gray Matters
- Smooth Pebbles
- Social Science Statistics Blog
- Sound and Mind
- The Splintered Mind
- TierneyLab
- Translating Autism
- World of Psychology
Other links
- Association for Psychological Science
- BioMotion
- Brain Connection
- George Mather's Motion Demos
- Peter Wenderoth's Perception Demos
- plNET (Purves Lab)
- POSbase
- PsychExperiments
- SandlotScience
- Social Science Information Gateway
- Tangled Bank
- The Panda's Thumb
- Visual Phenomena
Participate in research
Other Information
« The claim: Politically liberal brains are better at handling change | Main | Do you have to be a heartless genius to be a good philanthropist? »
Cool visual attention experiment
Category: Fun and games
Posted on: September 11, 2007 2:19 PM, by Dave Munger
Find more posts in: 
Humanities & Social Science
Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More
Comments
Missed the woman with the umbrella the first time around, but surprised myself by counting exactly 20 passes.
Posted by: Tim | September 11, 2007 2:45 PM
See, I went the other way. I completely failed to count passes (too much going on, got muddled early), but did see the woman with the umbrella as she walked off the left side of the screen.
Not sure what it says to be observant enough to spot the unusual item, but completely fail at the assigned task.
Posted by: Joel | September 11, 2007 3:17 PM
Surprised myself by counting 19 total, and of course completely missing the woman.
However, after counting 7-8, I noticed a correlation between the passes and a beep sound, and ended up counting only the beeps :-)
Posted by: Vincent | September 11, 2007 4:18 PM
Wow.. I missed both the beeps and the woman.
Posted by: Rodolfo Hansen | September 11, 2007 5:02 PM
I was watching for the guy in the gorilla suit.
Posted by: Stephen Downes | September 11, 2007 5:23 PM
@Vincent:
I noticed the beeps, too, but figured they were probably there to distract me from counting accurately, so I tried my best to ignore them. A couple of the passes were a bit hard to make out, which is why I was so surprised when it stopped on my 20th count and it was revealed.
Posted by: Tim | September 11, 2007 6:04 PM
I guessed it was one of those "man in a gorilla suit" videos so was too busy watching for thing I was supposed to not see to count the passes.
Posted by: Jeffrey | September 11, 2007 7:07 PM
I too figured the beeps were like the woman counting so I ignored them. I watched the basketball the black-shirts started with and nothing else, though it was kind of confusing. I did get 20 passes, but was prepared to have missed a couple. And missed the women entirely.
Posted by: The Ridger | September 11, 2007 7:30 PM
Like joel I didn't do much on counting the passes, but saw the woman with the umbrella. Not sure what that means.
Posted by: Phillip Rhodes | September 11, 2007 8:25 PM
I saw the woman although I didn't see an umbrella. What did the experimenter say that the purpose of the beeps was?
Posted by: Chris | September 11, 2007 9:50 PM
Got both 20, and the woman with the umbrella. (The trick is to unfocus your eyes a bit, to be a bit unfocused on specific details to see the whole picture. I guess I do this as normal) I've got three kids, a dog, and I play drums, so maybe that would explain it. :)
Posted by: Alex | September 11, 2007 11:57 PM
I counted 18 and saw the woman and the umbrella.
I guess two children at home all the time, while I write code, makes focusing 'difficult' - as the mind gets used to fast task switching, it'll try to follow that pattern all the time.
Posted by: Arnaldo | September 12, 2007 9:59 AM
I only missed 4 passes. I saw the woman. She was fully draped and had an umbrella.
Posted by: Tom B | September 12, 2007 10:54 AM
Like others, I figured there would be a gorilla suit. (I've never actually seen any gorilla suit film, but I have seen stills from one.) There wasn't any gorilla, but I did see the woman with an umbrella. I didn't even try to count the passes, and couldn't say if there were nil, five, eight hundred seventy two, or minus eleven (albeit some of those counts are clearly implausible or impossible). I was a bit disoriented since it seemed some of the figures weren't quite right, possibly translucent, and I failed to notice any shadows.
Posted by: blf | September 13, 2007 7:13 AM
I wonder if the beeps helped or hurt or were a possible confound in this study, which was on visual attention...Like Vincent and Tim, I noticed the beeps (but not the pattern, so I ignored them). Try this on a fresh batch of people with the sound off - would they a) be more or less accurate at counting passes? b) notice or not notice the woman with the umbrella?
Posted by: Grace C | September 13, 2007 7:42 AM
No need to repeat the study -- it's been done dozens of times. Greta shows the gorilla video to her class every year, and every year they're all fooled. The beeps might have something to do with it, but I suspect the real reason so few of our readers (or at least the ones who commented) were fooled is that they were either familiar with the original study or just naturally suspicious.
Posted by: Dave Munger | September 13, 2007 7:51 AM
Got both the passes and the woman right but missed the umbrella. I'm single and code for a living - should I maintain this pattern?
Posted by: AR | September 17, 2007 7:23 AM
Credit should properly be given to Ulrich Neisser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Neisser) who first had the idea to demonstrate selective attention by creating a movie showing a woman with an umbrella and instructing people to count other stuff. Simons later took that idea and created a movie that featured an actor dressed as gorilla in place of the woman.
Best --u
Posted by: Ulf-Dietrich Reips | September 30, 2007 2:30 PM