Keith Barry: Brain magic. Scienceofmagic. Inattentional blindness. Basket ball (1:22) Gorillas in our midst. Siamons & Chabris Full paper. Inattentional deafness (a similar experiment done with sound) One of the most famous experiments in cognitive psychology (pdf) involved a person in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball game between two teams of players, one dressed in white, the other in black.
Told to count passes between the players in white, most people who watched a video of this scene completely failed to notice the gorilla. The experiment provided a dramatic demonstration of what's known as inattentional blindness - our failure to process unexpected visual stimuli that we aren't paying attention to. Now a pair of researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London have provided the first demonstration of prolonged inattentional deafness. Their participants failed to hear a man walk through an auditory scene for nineteen seconds saying repeatedly "I am a gorilla".
In an initial study, 40 participants listened to the scene and they were told to pay attention either to the men's conversation or the women's. A test of auditory awareness (listen with headphones!) Change Blindness experiment and explanation (5:57 Start from 1:17) Another short explanation of change blindness (4:08) Change blindness plank experiment (5:49) Change blindness london picture (0:47) Change Blindness Airplane picture (on going flicker)