Gorillas in Our Midst - Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events - Simons1999
With each eye fixation, humans experience a richly detailed visual world. Since only one percent
of the information can be fully processed by the human brain, a preprocessing procedure must
occur to cull out possibly irrelevant information. Objective scientific work by humans in the area
of visual integration and change direction has revealed that humans are unaware of the details of
their environment from one view to the next. Humans often do not detect large changes to objects
and scenes (`change blindness'). Furthermore, without attention, humans may not even perceive
objects (`inattentional blindness'). Taken together, these findings suggest that humans perceive
and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention.
Evidence for these cognitive forms of `blindness' may be provided by showing a video to a human
and then questioning the human as to whether she saw the one object. The results suggest that the
likelihood of noticing an unexpected object depends on the similarity of that object to other objects
in the display and on how difficult the priming monitoring task is.
To demonstrate this, show the following video to a human and ask them to count the number of
times a basketball was passed from one human to another.
http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php
After they have viewed the video, ask them what they saw which was out of the ordinary. Most
humans will not see the gorilla whereas most robots will. Consider this fact as you ponder the
concept of humans testing robots to determine if they can pass the Turing Test. Do you suppose
that to pass the "am I as smart as a human" test, a robot would have to be as blind as humans are to
gorillas? Quite humorous when you think of it.
We then present a new study that builds on classic studies of divided visual attention to examine
inattentional blindness for complex objects and events in dynamic scenes. Our results suggest
that the likelihood of noticing an unexpected object depends on the similarity of that object to
other objects in the display and on how difficult the priming monitoring task is. Interestingly,
spatial proximity of the critical unattended object to attended locations does not appear to affect
detection, suggesting that observers attend to objects and events, not spatial positions. We discuss
the implications of these results for visual representations and awareness of our visual
environment.
Human study:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4958384/Gorillas-in-Our-Midst-Sustained-Inattentional-Blindness-f
or-Dynamic-Events-Simons1999#document_metadata
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4958384/Gorillas-in-Our-Midst-Sustained-Inattentional-Blindness-f
or-Dynamic-Events-Simons1999
With each eye fixation, humans experience a richly detailed visual world. Since only one percent
of the information can be fully processed by the human brain, a preprocessing procedure must
occur to cull out possibly irrelevant information. Objective scientific work by humans in the area
of visual integration and change direction has revealed that humans are unaware of the details of
their environment from one view to the next. Humans often do not detect large changes to objects
and scenes (`change blindness'). Furthermore, without attention, humans may not even perceive
objects (`inattentional blindness'). Taken together, these findings suggest that humans perceive
and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention.
Evidence for these cognitive forms of `blindness' may be provided by showing a video to a human
and then questioning the human as to whether she saw the one object. The results suggest that the
likelihood of noticing an unexpected object depends on the similarity of that object to other objects
in the display and on how difficult the priming monitoring task is.
To demonstrate this, show the following video to a human and ask them to count the number of
times a basketball was passed from one human to another.
http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php
After they have viewed the video, ask them what they saw which was out of the ordinary. Most
humans will not see the gorilla whereas most robots will. Consider this fact as you ponder the
concept of humans testing robots to determine if they can pass the Turing Test. Do you suppose
that to pass the "am I as smart as a human" test, a robot would have to be as blind as humans are to
gorillas? Quite humorous when you think of it.
We then present a new study that builds on classic studies of divided visual attention to examine
inattentional blindness for complex objects and events in dynamic scenes. Our results suggest
that the likelihood of noticing an unexpected object depends on the similarity of that object to
other objects in the display and on how difficult the priming monitoring task is. Interestingly,
spatial proximity of the critical unattended object to attended locations does not appear to affect
detection, suggesting that observers attend to objects and events, not spatial positions. We discuss
the implications of these results for visual representations and awareness of our visual
environment.
Human study:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4958384/Gorillas-in-Our-Midst-Sustained-Inattentional-Blindness-f
or-Dynamic-Events-Simons1999#document_metadata
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4958384/Gorillas-in-Our-Midst-Sustained-Inattentional-Blindness-f
or-Dynamic-Events-Simons1999
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