Inattentional blindness: Moon-walking Gorilla in the Brain

Have you ever wondered why you usually miss glaring bloopers in major motion pictures? If you are like most people, you probably believe that just because your eyes are open, you are seeing. So why do we sometimes fail to see things that are right in front of our eyes?

The reality is that attention plays a major role in visual perception. One of the primary reasons why you fail to notice these mistakes in films and television programs is a psychological phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. When your attention is focused on one demanding task, such as paying attention to the main character in a movie, you might not notice unexpected things entering your visual field.

This term was first used by Arien Mack and Irvin Rock in 1992, and was used as the title of a book written by Mack that was published by the MIT press in 1998. One of the best-known experiments demonstrating inattentional blindness is the Simons and Chabris famous video. The video experiment became so famous; they re-filmed with with a new twist to help illustrate their point.

 Original video experiment

 Re-filmed experiment

How on earth could so many people could miss such obvious and unexpected events right before their eyes? Because their attention was focused elsewhere on a demanding task, the surprise basically became invisible. Rather than focusing on every tiny detail in the world around us, we tend to concentrate on things that are important and then rely on our existing schemas to fill in the rest. This is highly economical and allows us to focus our existing attentional, cognitive, and processing resources on the things that are most important, while still allowing us to have a cohesive and seamless experience of the world around us.

One of the reasons why people so often miss the gorilla sauntering through a scene of people playing basketball is simply because the stimulus lacks what is known as ecological validity. How often does a gorilla show up in the middle of a basketball game? Because this is unlikely to happen in a real-world setting, we are simply less likely to notice it.

A Few Real-World Examples of Inattentional Blindness

•    You are watching a historical film set in ancient Greece. You don’t notice a major blooper in which an airplane appears in the background of a pivotal scene.
•    You decide to make a phone call while driving through busy traffic. You fail to notice that the traffic light has turned red, so you run the stop light and end up getting a traffic ticket for inattentive driving.
•    People often neglect their retirement saving for the pressing focus of their current living expenses to take care of family.
• Businesses can be blindsided by new technology or new customer trends when the leadership teams are overly focused on existing competitors or current obstacles.

 Sources:

_{Eysenck, M. W. & Keane, M. T. (2011). Cognitive psychology: A student’s handbook. Psychology Press.}

_{Mack, A. & Rock, I. (1999). Inattentional blindness: An overview by Arien Mack and Irvin Rock. Retrieved from http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2417.pdf}

_{Mauldin, K. (2013). Inattentional blindness. In A. K. Taylor (Ed.). Encyclopedia of human memory. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC.}

_{Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074.}

_{Simons, D. (2012, Sept.). But did you see the gorilla? The problem with inattentional blindness. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/but-did-you-see-the-gorilla-the-problem-with-inattentional-blindness-17339778/?no-ist}