{"id":6152,"date":"2004-05-06T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2004-05-06T20:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/05\/06\/more-than-meets-the-eye-2.html"},"modified":"2004-05-06T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2004-05-06T20:11:10","slug":"more_than_meets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/06\/more_than_meets.html","title":{"rendered":"More than meets the eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

As has long been known in the legal and justice system, eyewitnesses see a lot less than they think<\/a>. Indeed, as a survival mechanism, we tend to see or notice what we expect (or are on the alert) to see or notice, particularly when distracted by other tasks. <\/p>\n

In one experiment, people who were walking across a college campus were asked by a stranger for directions. During the resulting chat, two men carrying a wooden door passed between the stranger and the subjects. After the door went by, the subjects were asked if they had noticed anything change.
\nHalf of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger had been substituted with a man who was of different height, of different build and who sounded different. He was also wearing different clothes.
\nDespite the fact that the subjects had talked to the stranger for 10-15 seconds before the swap, half of them did not detect that, after the passing of the door, they had ended up speaking to a different person. This phenomenon, called change blindness, highlights how we see much less than we think we do.<\/p>\n

This probably ties into the whole “Not noticing when your spouse has gotten a new haircut\/shaved off their beard” phenominon. If we’re not watching for a change, we’re a lot less likely to notice it.<\/p>\n

Working with Christopher Chabris at Harvard University, Simons came up with another demonstration that has now become a classic, based on a videotape of a handful of people playing basketball. They played the tape to subjects and asked them to count the passes made by one of the teams.
\nAround half failed to spot a woman dressed in a gorilla suit who walked slowly across the scene for nine seconds, even though this hairy interloper had passed between the players and stopped to face the camera and thump her chest.
\nHowever, if people were simply asked to view the tape, they noticed the gorilla easily. The effect is so striking that some of them refused to accept they were looking at the same tape and thought that it was a different version of the video, one edited to include the ape.<\/p>\n

Lots of interesting stuff in the article, including general limitations of being able to juggle attention to more than four items at once (which is probably part of the problem with cell phone usage in cars).<\/p>\n

Cool article, with a link to videos <\/a>some of the tests used.<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/small>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As has long been known in the legal and justice system, eyewitnesses see a lot less than they think. Indeed, as a survival mechanism, we tend to see or notice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17919,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/21\/stranger-in-paradise-sdcc.html","url_meta":{"origin":6152,"position":0},"title":"Stranger in Paradise (#SDCC)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-Jul-10 11:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Terry Moore, nice as always. He declined the sloppy wet kiss De wanted me to convey.","rel":"","context":"In "Comics & Comic Books"","block_context":{"text":"Comics & Comic Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132051,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/16\/stranger-in-a-strange-land-is-coming-to-tv.html","url_meta":{"origin":6152,"position":1},"title":""Stranger in a Strange Land" is coming to TV","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 16-Nov-16 9:03am","format":false,"excerpt":"Paramount and Universal will be adapting the Heinlein SF classic as a TV series on Syfy (one hopes of limited duration). Given the book's mix of weirdness and controversy and polemic, it could be remarkably cool, or it could be a hot mess. I'm guardedly looking forward to it. 'Stranger\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135990,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/27\/i-was-a-stranger-and-you-took-me-in.html","url_meta":{"origin":6152,"position":2},"title":"“I was a stranger, and you took me in”","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 27-Mar-18 7:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The problems of the homeless are not trivial to solve, and not cheap, and not without risks ... but by the same token, kicking the can (and the homeless) down the road, adopting a NIMBY attitude, running them out of town because they are addicts or crazy or poor or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/homeless.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12731,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/08\/birth_of_a_campaign_strat.html","url_meta":{"origin":6152,"position":3},"title":"Birth of a campaign strategy","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 8-Oct-08 1:49pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Who is that short, bald stranger there? \"Maverick\" is his name ... \u00a0 \u00a0 (via Doyce)...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11033,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/20\/whos_to_blame.html","url_meta":{"origin":6152,"position":4},"title":"Who’s to blame?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 20-Apr-07 7:53pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Someone has been collecting a list of everyone being blamed for the Virginia Tech shootings in various corners of the punditocracy.\u00a0 All the usual suspects, plus some ... even stranger...","rel":"","context":"In "Fourth Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Fourth Estate","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/fourth-estate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":500,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/07\/saved_by_the_bl.html","url_meta":{"origin":6152,"position":5},"title":"Saved by the blog","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 7-Apr-03 4:07pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Boy meets girl. Boy waxes eloquent about girl on his blog. Stranger sees blog entry, sends boy note saying all is not as it seems ... Yeesh. There's a TV...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}