Simon And Chabris Flashcards
What was the aim of Simons and Chabris’ (1999) study?
To investigate inattentional blindness, which is the failure to notice an unexpected event when attention is focused on something else.
What is inattentional blindness?
A phenomenon where people fail to see an unexpected object or event because their attention is focused on something else.
What research method was used in Simons and Chabris’ study?
A laboratory experiment with an independent measures design.
What was the sample size and composition?
228 participants, mostly university students. After data exclusions, 192 participants were used in the final analysis.
What materials were used in the experiment?
Four video recordings of two teams (one wearing white shirts, one wearing black shirts) playing basketball.
What was the primary task given to participants?
They had to count the number of passes made by either the white or black team, depending on their assigned condition.
What was the unexpected event in Simons and Chabris’ study?
Either a gorilla or an umbrella woman (a person holding an umbrella) walked through the game, visible for about 5 seconds.
What were the two types of video conditions?
Transparent condition – the players and the unexpected event were partially transparent.
Opaque condition – the players and unexpected event were solid and fully visible.
What were the four experimental conditions in Simons and Chabris’ study?
White team focus, transparent video
White team focus, opaque video
Black team focus, transparent video
Black team focus, opaque video
What percentage of participants failed to notice the unexpected event?
46% of participants did not notice the gorilla or umbrella woman.
How did transparency affect detection of the unexpected event?
In the transparent condition, only 42% noticed the event.
In the opaque condition, 67% noticed it.
This suggests that the transparent condition made it harder to detect the event.
How did the type of unexpected event (gorilla vs. umbrella woman) affect detection?
The umbrella woman was noticed more often (65%) than the gorilla (44%).
How did team color focus affect the detection of the gorilla?
Participants who focused on the black team were more likely to notice the gorilla (58%), while those focusing on the white team were less likely to notice it (27%).
Why were participants focusing on the black team more likely to notice the gorilla?
The gorilla was black, so it stood out more when attention was already on the black team, making it easier to detect due to similarity in color.
What was the main conclusion of Simons and Chabris’ study?
Inattentional blindness occurs frequently in dynamic events, meaning people fail to notice unexpected objects when focusing on a task.
What is one real-world application of Simons and Chabris’ findings?
Their findings are important for road safety, as drivers may fail to notice unexpected objects (e.g., pedestrians, cyclists) if they are focused on specific tasks like checking mirrors or following GPS directions.
Why is high control a strength of the study?
Since participants were given a specific task (counting passes), it was clear that attention was the key factor affecting detection of the unexpected event.
How does the study have practical applications?
It helps in understanding real-life attention issues, such as why drivers fail to see hazards or why radiologists might miss anomalies in X-rays.
Why does the study have low ecological validity?
The task of counting basketball passes is artificial and does not fully reflect real-world inattentional blindness scenarios, such as driving.
How does participant bias affect the results?
Since most participants were university students, they may have had higher cognitive abilities than the general population, meaning results may not apply to everyone.
Why is ethical concern a minor issue in this study?
Participants were not fully aware of the true aim (to test inattentional blindness), meaning there was some deception, but this was necessary to avoid demand characteristics.
How does inattentional blindness affect medical professionals?
Radiologists might overlook anomalies in X-rays or MRIs if they are looking for a specific abnormality, leading to missed diagnoses.
What do Simons and Chabris’ results tell us about visual attention?
Visual attention is limited—we can miss obvious events if we are focusing on another task.
Which condition led to the lowest detection of the unexpected event?
The transparent, hard task, gorilla condition, where only 8% of participants noticed the unexpected event.
What were participants told about the nature of the experiment before watching the video?
They were not told about the unexpected event (gorilla or umbrella woman) to ensure that their attention remained on the primary task.
What were the two types of counting tasks assigned to participants?
Easy condition – Count all passes made by the team they were assigned to.
Hard condition – Count separately the number of bounce passes and aerial passes.
How long did the unexpected event (gorilla/umbrella woman) appear in the video?
It was visible for 5 seconds, walking across the screen from left to right.
How did the difficulty of the counting task affect inattentional blindness?
Easy task: 64% noticed the unexpected event.
Hard task: 45% noticed it.
This shows that increased cognitive load reduces the likelihood of noticing unexpected stimuli.
