Invisible Gorilla

Several years ago, I blogged about a psychological test done by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris regarding selective attention -- the notion that when you're paying attention to one thing, you don't always notice something else.

The test, done in 1999, just popped up in the news because it was used in a murder trial in New Zealand when defense attorneys argued that witnesses were so focused on one thing that they completely missed another. Read that story here, but first, watch the video, where six college students are playing catch with a basketball in a hallway. The object is to count how many passes are made by the students wearing white shirts...


[thanks to Robert Knotbob for the link]

Labels: