Core Studies - Simons And Chabris (Visual Inattention)

Question 1

What is visual inattention?

Answer 1

Failing to notice and unexpected object when attention is diverted

Question 2

What is the aim of the study?

Answer 2

To study the factors affecting visual detection rates for example the difficulty of tasks and the similarity of unexpected event and what their attention is focused on

Question 3

What is the method and design?

Answer 3

Laboratory experiment
Independent measures design

Question 4

How many different conditions were there? How were they created?

Answer 4

16 conditions
Hard / Easy task
Black / White
Transparent / Opaque
Gorilla / Umbrella

Question 5

What is the dependant variable in the study

Answer 5

The amount of people who noticed the unexpected event

Question 6

How many participants were there?

Answer 6

228 originally but only 192 results used (split evenly across conditions)

Question 7

What was the sampling method?

Answer 7

Self selected sampling

Question 8

What did participants receive for taking part?

Answer 8

They either got nothing
A large candy bar
Or paid a single fee if they agreed to participate in another study too

Question 9

What was the procedure of the study?

Answer 9

There were 21 experimenters testing participants individually
Participants told they’d be watching a video of 2 teams of 3 players each
They were told to count how many passes made or count both bounce and aerial passes by either black or white team
They were asked to write down their scores

They were asked some questions : did you see anything unusual, did you see anything other than six players, did you see anyone else, did you see the unexpected event (named)

If they said yes they were asked for details

If they had seen study before results discarded

Participants gave informed consent and debriefed

Question 10

How many video tapes were there?
How long were they?

Answer 10

4 video tapes
75 seconds

Question 11

When did the unexpected event occur and for how long?

Answer 11

At 44-48 seconds for 5 seconds

Question 12

What was the description of each unexpected event?

Answer 12

Short lady in gorilla costume
Tall woman holding umbrella
Walked left to right

Question 13

What were 3 reasons some results were discarded?

Answer 13

Already knew experiment
Lost count of passes
Total count more than 3 stand fat deviation away from mean

Question 14

What were the main results?

Answer 14

54% noticed
46% didn’t notice

Question 15

What are some other results? (4)

Answer 15

Umbrella women noticed more
Unexpected event noticed more in opaque (67 v 42)
Participants watching black team noticed gorilla more
Only 8% saw gorilla in easy task of transparent white team

Question 16

What are 3 conclusions?

Answer 16

People more likely to notice unexpected event if it is visually similar to what they are paying attention to

There is no conscious perception without attention

Level of inattentional blindness depends on difficulty or task