Mind & EverydayFact

Half the viewers missed a gorilla walking through the frame.

In 1999 Simons and Chabris showed a video of players passing a basketball. The task: count the passes. Meanwhile a person in a gorilla suit walked through for nine seconds and beat its chest. About half the participants never noticed. Attention is a narrow spotlight, not a wide-angle lens.

Useful: You often don't see what you're not looking for, including while driving.

Source: doi.org

Aufmerksamkeit Wahrnehmung

Difficulty:

Question on this card

Roughly how many participants missed the gorilla?

Almost none
About 10 percent
About half
Almost all

Show the answer

Correct: About half

About 50 percent failed to notice it because they were focused on counting.

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