Comments on: What we don’t notice…

By: Jonathan Dursi

Jonathan Dursi — Fri, 07 May 2004 02:16:32 +0000

I spent all day today looking for things like this (or, more generally, the lack of reliablity of eyewitnesses) for a class I’m teaching tomorrow. After finding nothing much worth using, I finally gave up and caught up on my blog-reading, and ta-dah! Moral of the story: do less research, do more blog reading.

By: bza

bza — Thu, 06 May 2004 22:07:06 +0000

It’s crucial to the experiment that viewers not only be ignorant of the gorilla but that they be primed to attend to another part of the scene. I suspect that John Quiggin didn’t prime his son forcefully enough. (When I’ve seen the experiment demonstrated, the priming has been along the lines of “It’s crucial that you count the number of passes; nothing else about the scene matters. Remember: count the passes.”)

By: Hal

Hal — Thu, 06 May 2004 21:39:25 +0000

You might want to check out Inevitable Illusions by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, which describes similiar things in our reasoning process.

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Thu, 06 May 2004 20:48:02 +0000

“I’m not sure what YMMV stands for” Your mileage may vary. “but I assume it has something to do with the fact that none of the cards you are originally shown come up the second time.” Oh, great. Ever hear of the word “spoiler”?

By: jdsm

jdsm — Thu, 06 May 2004 20:17:44 +0000

nat, I’m not sure what YMMV stands for but I assume it has something to do with the fact that none of the cards you are originally shown come up the second time. I worked it out almost immediately.

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Thu, 06 May 2004 15:49:11 +0000

“Why the hell would a team called the Suns have a Gorilla as a mascot?” The guy who had to wear the flaming-ball-of-gases suit kept complaining about the heat. BTW, here’s a demonstration of the power of concentration that I found impressive, but YMMV.

By: DJW

DJW — Thu, 06 May 2004 15:32:39 +0000

Why the hell would a team called the Suns have a Gorilla as a mascot? My British friends tell me about a museum of perception in London that has the following exhibit. It’s a seemingly interactive slice of urban life, where through a series of video screens you experience a series of ostensibly typical moments walking around London. At one point, an angry, rude man berates you for a 20-30 seconds for bumping into him or some such thing. Later, you witness a hit and run, and you get a good several second look at the face of the guilty party. However, in a mock line-up after the fact, most people misidentify the rude man as the hit and runner, even though they don’t look similar at all. Or at least that’s how i remember it being told, if someone knows more about the museum/exhibit, and I’ve got something wrong about this, I’d be curious to see it.

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Thu, 06 May 2004 14:26:14 +0000

Possible explanation: It’s not unusual to see a gorilla at a basketball game (see, e.g., this), but it is unusual to see people playing basketball so poorly. (Have they never heard of double dribble? Traveling?)

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 06 May 2004 13:28:47 +0000

I’m not surprised that people find that one easy to spot: I can’t believe that having a little QuickTime window is the optimal way of showing the movie. When I saw the experiment on British tv, though, with a camera trained on an audience watching a similar film on a big screen, the effect was very marked – with only 3 or 4 people (out of 50 odd) noticing the gorilla.

By: LTH

LTH — Thu, 06 May 2004 12:27:14 +0000

I noticed the gorilla immediately when I was shown this some time ago.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 06 May 2004 11:57:30 +0000

I tried it out on my son (age 14) and he noticed as soon as the gorilla faced the camera. Just one data point, of course.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Thu, 06 May 2004 09:51:13 +0000

For those whose browsers don’t find the video on the above page (there’s some talentless bit of Javascript there), the URL http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/gorilla.mov works for me.

By: Motoko Kusanagi

Motoko Kusanagi — Thu, 06 May 2004 09:19:36 +0000

That reminds me of this (slightly silly) article on luck. (“I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: “Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.”) So my question is: are gorilla suit-spotters luckier in life than others?