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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

If you aren't familiar with the experiment where you try to count the number of times a basketball is passed between people, you should watch the video and try the experiment first [youtube.com] before reading on.

Research Reveals We Can Spot the Unexpected Better than Commonly Believed [nyu.edu]:

We are quite good at spotting unexpected objects while focused on another activity if they are moving fast, reveals a new study by a team of New York University researchers. Their findings cast doubt on a long-standing view that our ability to see the unexpected is necessarily impaired when our attention is already directed elsewhere.

"For decades, it's been thought that when we're intently focused on something relevant, like driving or playing a game, we fail to spot something that unexpectedly enters our field of vision, even if it is clearly visible and moving," says Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor at New York University's Center for Data Science and Department of Psychology and lead author of the paper, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our study questions the generality of this view because it shows that people, while focusing on a task, are quite capable of noticing unexpected objects that are moving quickly. However, our research confirms that we are indeed less adept at noticing these same objects when they are moving slowly."

The research team, who also included Wayne Mackey, Michael Karlovich, and David Heeger, centered its study on "inattentional blindness"—the inability to notice unexpected objects if attention is focused on a task. [...]

This and similar studies characterized one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology—inattentional blindness—as an inevitable flip side of task focusing, and essentially a deficit.

In the PNAS study, the NYU research team sought to better understand the nature of inattentional blindness through a series of experiments—and, specifically, whether our cognitive processing was indeed as limited as this previous work suggested.

They replicated the invisible gorilla experiment using more than 1,500 of research participants—but including several new conditions. In the original 1999 experiment, the gorilla moved slowly as well as upright—like a human (which it was!).

In the new PNAS research, research participants saw the gorilla (yes, also a human dressed in a gorilla costume) in additional ways. Specifically, the "NYU gorilla" moved at various speeds—in some conditions, just a little faster than the "original gorilla" and, in others, substantially faster than the original gorilla. During these experiments—just like in the original experiment—research participants were tasked with counting the number of basketball passes made by players wearing black or white shirts.

The experiment may be seen in this video [youtube.com].

Overall, the results showed that participants, while engaged in the pass-counting task, were more likely to spot the NYU gorilla if it was moving substantially faster than in the original 1999 experiment or if it was leaping instead of walking.

[...] "(O)ur findings...contribute to the ongoing debate on the impact of physical salience on inattentional blindness, suggesting that it is fast speeds specifically, not the physical salience of a feature more generally, that captures attention."

[...] "Fast-moving, unexpected objects seem to override the task focus of an organism," says Wallisch. "This will allow it to notice and react to the new potential threat, improving chances of survival."

Journal Reference:
Pascal Wallisch, Wayne E. Mackey, Michael W. Karlovich, and David J. Heeger, The visible gorilla: Unexpected fast—not physically salient—Objects are noticeable, PNAS, 120 (22) e2214930120 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2214930120 [doi.org]

Original Submission