Simon & Chabris Flashcards
key theme
attention (visual attention)
change blindness
refers to surprising difficulty observers have in noticing large changes to visual scenes- failure to detect that an object has moved/gone
inattentional blindness
when we are attentive to another object or task we often fail to notice an unexpected object even if it appears at the point of fixation.
previous research by Neisser et al
a method was created that would test inattentional blindness using a video recording where 2 teams of basketball players appeared, each team passed a ball from one player to next, ps would be instructed to watch either team in white or team in black, and press a key each time a pass was seen (focussed their attention) Approx 30 secs into video an ‘unexpected event’ happened in form of a woman carrying an open umbrella walking across screen. (appeared for 4 seconds)
Findings of Neisser’s research
out of 28 ps, 6 reported seeing the umbrella lady and 22 did NOT see her.
(evidence for inattentional blindness)
A group of ps that just watched the video (without basketball players) spotted umbrella woman 100% of time.
problems with Neisser’s research
Isn’t generalisable to everyday real-life experiences-unrealistic because of way it was recorded. 2 basketball teams separately recorded and transposed onto each other. Umbrella woman was separately recorded and superimposed.
This meant video was ‘transparent’ -made unexpected event even harder to see (would not be case in realistic setting)
Findings from lab studies of inattentional blindness LACK ecological validity.
Aim of Simon & Chabris study
Using Neisser’s video-based method as a model, Simon & Chabris aimed to confirm that inattentional blindness occurs in a realistic, complex situation, a video recording of events, and that this is sustained; that is, the unexpected event lasts for 5 secs or more but is nonetheless unnoticed by observers (Ps).
Additionally, the study sought to identify the effect of a number of variables on the rate of inattentional blindness: variable 1=
1- Neisser;s work included versions of video where umbrella woman wore either white or black, but findings suggested that similarity of unexpected event to event being focused on did NOT mean she was noticed more. Simon & Chabris wanted to investigate further and aimed to see if similarity of unexpected event to attended event would have an effect on inattentional blindness.
effects on rate of inattentional blindness: variable 2=
2- the study aimed to find out whether events that are particularly unusual are more likely to be detected.
effects on rate of inattentional blindness: variable 3=
3- The level of difficulty of the task was also to be tested- would a more difficult task increase the rate of inattentional blindness?
effects on rate of inattentional blindness: variable 4=
4-Finally, study aimed to investigate the effect of the unusual superimposition and ‘transparency’ of characters in the video used by Neisser; would a more realistic video give similar or different findings?
DV
did they see the unexpected event? (gorilla)
Participants
228 ps- referred to as ‘observers’
-almost ALL undergraduate students.
-each ps either volunteered without compensation/ received large candy bar for participating/ or were paid a single fee for participating in larger testing session including another unrelated experiment.
-Researchers were based at Harvard University.
36 ps were discarded, why?
Either lost count of passes or had seen the study before. So results were used from 192 participants.
(equally distributed across the 16 conditions)
experimental design
lab experiment, independent measures design
4 independent variables ( 4 videos )
1- transparent / umbrella woman
2- transparent / gorilla
3- opaque (natural, realistic) / umbrella
4- opaque / gorilla
for each of the 4 displays there were 4 task conditions:
1- white/easy
2-white/hard
3-black/easy
4-black/hard
how many individual conditons overall?
16
Dependent variable
The number of ps in each of the 16 conditions who NOTICED the unexpected event (umbrella woman or gorilla)
