Psychology - Cognitive Area Simons and Chabris (1999)

To build on previous research into divided visual attention and to investigate inattention blindness for complex objects and events in dynamic scenes

The failure to see an event or object in your field of vision because you are focused on other element of what you can see.

In a recorded video two teams of basketball players would pass a ball from one player to the next. During this clip an expected event would happen, a women would talk across carrying an umbrella.

Lab experiment using an independent measures design.

1. 1. The Transparent/Umbrella Woman condition

2. 2. The Transparent/Gorilla condition

3. 3. The Opaque/Umbrella Woman condition

4. 4. The Opaque Gorilla condition.

For each of the four displays there were four task conditions:

(i) White/Easy
(ii) White/Hard
(iii) Black/Easy
(iv) Black/Hard

Overall there were 16 conditions.

The number of participants in each of the 16 conditions who noticed the unexpected event (Umbrella
Woman or Gorilla).

Four video tapes, each 75 seconds long with 2 teams of three players, one dressed in white t shirts and one in black t shirts.

After 44-48 seconds of action either of two unexpected events occurred.

There were two styles of video: transparent and opaque.

228 participants, almost all undergraduate students.

Participants volunteered and were paid a small fee or received a candy bar.

36 participants were discarded so results were used from 192 participants. These were equally distributed across the 16
conditions.

21 experimenters tested the participants. After viewing the video they were asked to write down the number of passes. They were then asked the following additional questions:

(i) While you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual in the video?
(ii) Did you notice anything other than the six players?
(iii) Did you see a gorilla/woman carrying an umbrella walk across the screen?

Out of all 192 participants across all conditions, 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to notice the unexpected event.

More participants noticed the unexpected event in the Opaque condition (67%) than the Transparent condition (42%).

More participants noticed the unexpected event in the Easy (64%) than the Hard (45%) condition.

The Gorilla was noticed by more participants who attended to the actions of the Black team than those who watched the White team (Black
58%, White 27%, per condition).

Individuals have a sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.

The level of inattentional blindness depends on the difficulty of the primary task.

Individuals are more likely to notice unexpected events if these events are visually similar to the events they are paying attention to.

Controlled lab experiment which fulfilled scientific criteria.

High design validity, as extraneous variables are highly controlled.

However, participants may have been affected by demand characteristics.

Quantitative data was collected which can be easily summarised and compared between conditions.

Quantitative data can be statistically analysed, the study can also be easily repeated in order to establish reliability

The study was conducted within the ethical guidelines,

Used a highly controlled lab experiment, this study has high design validity.

As the participants knew they were in a study they may have tried to affect the outcome of the study.

The findings of this study were concurrently valid with both the computer based studies and Neisser’s earlier umbrella women video.

It can be argued that it is not ecologically valid as responding to a filmed ask is competently different as focusing in a real life setting.

This study has internal reliability as it uses a standardised procedure and laboratory experiment which can be replicated. This could be used to establish test-retest reliability.

A very large sample was collected and allowed the researchers to established a trend in their findings.

The research
could be conducted relatively cheaply and quickly using university students.

The student sample had a narrow age gap and narrow socio-economic background meaning it was not representative of the general population.

Used a volunteer sample, some receiving no payment, some a candy bar and some paid for taking part in a larger experiment as a whole.

Self selected samples are convenient being both time and cost effective they are open to volunteer bias which may limit generalisability.

Cognitive processes such as inattentional bias depend upon the physiognomy of our brain, we could argue that they are not ethnocentric as they are not investigating a specific behaviour.

However, the findings may only represent how university educated peoples cognitive processes work, since only students were studied.

The overall inattentional blindness was 46%. This means more than half of the saw unexpected event and did not experience inattentional blindness.

This suggest individual differences in attention.

Are cognitive processes determine what see see and we do not have conscious control over that.

You have the free will to focus attention on what you like but changing you centre of vision.

Used a controlled lab experiment and fulfilled scientific criteria.

It investigates the negative process of attention, specifically selective attention and trying to figure out if an unexpected event that is in our field of vision missed be missed.

The key theme is attention, this study demonstrates visual selective attention.

It confirms inattentive blindness in dynamic events.