Can you trust your mind?

Published by admin June 10th, 2006 in Stuff

How good are you when it comes to concentration and perception?
Here is a cool experiment where you can test you ability to focus attention on a certain object in a short video.

When you follow the link below, a new window will open and you will see a short video. In the video two groups of people are passing a basket ball to each other. You should focus your attention on the people in white t-shirts. Try to count how many times the ball is passed between them during the video. This can be a bit tricky as the other group, in black t-shirts, must be ignored. When you have watched the video, close the window and return to this site.
Watch the video only once.

Selective attention video - Visual Cognition Lab

Scroll to the bottom of the page to get the answer.

How many did you get? 10-15?

Did you see anything else?
Whenever your eyes are open, all the information in the image that is projected onto your retina is available to your brain. But the amount of information is just too great, so you choose to focus your attention on certain things. For example if you look out your window for five minutes, then look away, you can probably tell if there are a lot of people or cars outside. You have noticed if itÂ´s raining and you can tell the color of the house across the street. What you canÂ´t say is how many tiles are on the roof of that building, or how many branches are on the big tree in your neighborÂ´s garden. Your brain has chosen to ignore that information, even though it was available to you.

Watch the video again, this time donÂ´t count the balls, just watch it like any other video.

Selective attention video - Visual Cognition Lab

DonÂ´t read on until youÂ´ve watched the video again…..

Did you see anything this time?

Did you see this gorilla?
basket2

Very few people actually see the gorilla, partly because you are asked to watch the people in white, but mostly because you are too busy focusing on the ball. Now you can ask yourself how much else are you missing every day?

Send this page to your friends and see if their minds are more observant than yours! Also try to show this video for a group of people - ask them not to say anything, but just write down their answer. Tell them that this is a test of the attention of men vs women - that will get them really focused See how many times you can show them the video before they all see the gorilla.

Selective attention on Wikipedia.org

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35 Responses to “Can you trust your mind?”

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1 Emily LoVullo Dec 12th, 2006 at 12:29 pm

My graduate Cognitive professor just recently performed a similar experiment with our class and it really intrigued me! It’s so interesting what we DON’T see!! I’ve decided to write my Masters thesis on this topic because it intrigued me so much!
2 Roughy Feb 11th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

I saw the gorilla… probably payed attention to it for about 1~second before turning back to the ball. counter 15 throws, though it might have been 14 as one of them was completely blocked from view.
3 JoJo Feb 11th, 2007 at 11:02 pm

I saw the gorilla the first time. And by pass, did you mean physically throw the ball, or dribble and pass? Cause that slightly changes the number.
4 Si Feb 12th, 2007 at 8:24 am

I counted 15 when seeing it for the first time and at some point noticed the gorilla walking throuhg the picture, I think he was about halfway through, still amazing how you can focus your attention.

“mtv generation - can`t focus my attention”
- Automato
5 Jon Feb 12th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

I saw the gorilla just fine. I guess I’m one of the chosen ones. And I counted 14. But I don’t think I know how to count.
6 ronnie Feb 13th, 2007 at 5:15 pm

I watched this video courtesy of the State of California Dept. of Motor
Vehicles - yes, traffic school. In a class of 30 students, I was the only
one who saw the gorilla, probably because I’m a filmmaker by profession.
But 29 other folks, sharp and competent and very stoked by the teacher’s
challenge to “see if you can get the correct number of passes, or if
you’re not so bright,” missed the gorilla entirely.

And though I got this one right, I know the number of times in real life
driving that I miss things right in front of me because I’m concentrating
elsewhere….
7 wes Feb 15th, 2007 at 7:58 pm

i saw the gorilla also…and i counted 15 passes. but i thot the gorilla was just a guy wearing a ski mask.
8 Edmund Feb 16th, 2007 at 5:10 am

I saw that someone in black wasn’t following the pattern, but didn’t take my focus off of the ball (and folks in white) enough to see that it was a guy in a gorilla suit.
9 Tris Feb 16th, 2007 at 8:49 am

Don’t think counting right or wrong is the idea here people.
10 yazz Mar 2nd, 2007 at 2:43 pm

OMG! i ddnt c da gorilla at all xxx
11 Steven Leser Mar 6th, 2007 at 6:47 pm

The experimenters are kidding themselves if they think they have unearthed anything special with this experiment. You conditioned the viewer and biased the data by asking them to concentrate on a fairly difficult task of making sure they could count the passes while players moved in and out of other players who were also passing a ball and had to be ignored. In particular, people with certain backgrounds and in certain careers have been trained to attempt to filter out extraneous visual and other information when attempting to complete tasks. Not seeing the gorilla or other distractions is a distinct advantage when completing a complex task in a distracting environment.

What would be a more interesting test of perceptiveness would be a complex scene with a lot of different things going on and then ask people to list all the different things they saw and ask specifically if people saw a number of different things occurring (with control statements that listed supposed things that occurred that did not really occur).
12 Emplode Apr 30th, 2007 at 1:00 am

I was shown this at school. no one in our yr 12 psych class saw the gorilla in the first viewing. When asked to watch the clip again everyone was convinced the teacher was showing us a different movie clip because there seemed no way we could miss some guys waltzing in dressed up as a gorrila.
hilarious!
although, i was a little dissapointed when i showed my mum for the first time. “so, how many passes were thrown by the people in white?” “i dont know, i think 15… i was too distracted by the guy in the gorilla suit”. damn it!
13 Mario in Sweden Oct 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 am

Thanks for the film! I saw the gorila for 1-2 seconds.
a theird view i’ve try to count the black (16) and wite (15) passes
and I clealy saw the gorila eventhoght i was totaly concentrated…
I guess has to do with colours also!!
14 Ed Oct 24th, 2007 at 9:10 am

The original instructions that were given to me was that I was to count
only the passes made by the people in white. Of course, I didn’t see
the gorilla and thought that the second viewing of the clip was a
different clip. My first reaction was that if the instructions were to
count the passes by the people in black, everyone would see the gorilla.
In my mind, to count the passes, I had to eliminate noticing anything in black.
15 erog Nov 11th, 2007 at 11:37 pm

Thanks for the film!
16 PetSat Feb 21st, 2008 at 3:22 am

I watched the video with some 250 fellow researchers at a convension on “Mathematics Teaching” Only one lady noticed the gorilla and everybody else made a fun out of her notice. When we saw the film for the 2nd time everyone was so embarassed and the lady was so proud!!!
17 gorilla guy Mar 10th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

What made me laugh was reading the comments of *Steven Leser* from March 6 2007, then reading the comments of *yazz* from March 2 2007.

For the record, I counted fourteen ball passes between players in white, and did notice someone else walk into the picture, but had to watch a second time to see the gorilla.
18 Song Toan Apr 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

What I missed was: “Watch the video again, this time donÂ´t count the balls, just watch it like any other video.”

Nothing related to your concentration or perception. It should be changed to “multithread” instead. I wasted my time for it!
19 BrokenJohnny May 5th, 2008 at 4:00 am

I have no idea how anybody, anywhere, could EVER have missed the gorilla the first time around. Is this page a joke? Seriously, is it a joke? How can you not see it? I saw it instantly, and maintained the count. Any three year old should be able to do the same.

Am I supposed to believe that you all really just didn’t even NOTICE the guy in the gorilla suit when you were counting? I find that hard to believe. Please, somebody help me understand, how is this possible. How is it that anybody, anywhere could have missed that. It makes no sense what so ever. I just couldn’t fathom not seeing it.

Anybody who didn’t see the gorilla the first time around, you are a worthless, mindless sheep. You brain is so devoid of function, it is unable to perform more than one incredibly simple task at a time.

But I still don’t buy it. I mean, by this logic, people should have a hard time chewing gum and riding a bike. People should have a hard time drawing a pictures and having a conversation. The claim that is it all visual is ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous.

I think it has far, far more to do with a very poorly functioning brain.
20 WowJohnny Jun 2nd, 2008 at 6:20 am

Wow BrokenJohnny, time to lay off the caffeine…

Actually, out of the 40 MBA students in my class only about 5 saw the gorilla, so I disagree that it’s intelligence based… The rest of my fellow students were probably more intelligent than you.

And by the way, your logic is flawed when you say, “I mean, by this logic, people should have a hard time chewing gum and riding a bike.” If you want to use a physical example, a better example would be “juggled two balls in the left hand and printed their name backward with the right.” (Those are two actions requiring different sections of the brain to work simultaniously.) A better analogy would be to have someone play a fps video game, and ask, say, how many shots weren’t aimed at you… or what was the color of the shirt of the bystander in level 2… that would be an example of someone focused on one thing, and then asked a perception question on another.

You shouldn’t make fun of people with lesser intelligence anyways… I mean, really, how high-functioning is your brain if you can’t put together a better argument than that?
21 Peter Jun 29th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

Actually, Johnny, your comments immediately demonstrate your lack of cognitive ability; you can only understand things from your own perspective, without any true comprehension that of the billions of human brains, not all of them work exactly the same way yours does. By your own admission (”I just couldn’t fathom not seeing it”) there are some obvious concepts that are just too complicated for you.

In fact, the people that notice the gorilla tend to be those with poor attention skills; their brains are less efficient because they do not compartmentalize information. They have more difficulty distinguishing between important and irrelevant data.

On the other hand, you are at least correct in your claim that any three year old should be able to see it. Three year olds have underdeveloped brains, giving them short attention spans, and have not yet developed the ability to compartmentalize information. A person with a three-year old mentality might notice the gorilla, and notice the “S” on the wall, and count how many times the ball is passed, and yet be completely ignorant of the significance of the statistical results. They might also post an incendiary comment on somebody’s blog claiming to be so brilliant that they can’t comprehend basic human cognition.

Good job there, Einstein.
22 Dawn Jul 7th, 2008 at 11:44 pm

I did not see it..both my sons did but i really didn’t..that was so wird!
23 Alli Jul 12th, 2008 at 2:37 am

Nice
24 Andrea Jul 24th, 2008 at 11:00 am

Hi! I counted 14. I saw something strange, like a furry man, making funny moves (and I was getting distracted by it and beginning to laugh… probably while trying not to laugh i missed a pass) but i didn’t recognise it as a gorilla. In fact it was NOT a gorilla… Anyway, I didn’t notice the two “S” letters on the back wall!! Even if I had seen them in the introductory image on this page! And even if they were always there… That’s funny!
25 lolz Aug 6th, 2008 at 3:58 am

Broken Johnny, lose your virginity you pathetic geek.
26 FDA Aug 20th, 2008 at 12:32 am

gorilla is funky … thanks for posting the movie
27 us drugstore Aug 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Am I supposed to believe that you all really just didnâ€™t even NOTICE the guy in the gorilla suit when you were counting? I find that hard to believe.
28 carl carvo Oct 7th, 2008 at 5:14 pm

I didnt see the gorilla at all…

but give poor Johnny a break, he is just trying to make himself feel better…

maybe he doesnt get the chance to feel smart very often… you go Johnny… your better then everybody else… LOL
29 helmut Oct 12th, 2008 at 1:44 am

counted 14 but saw only the pictures of a person funny dressed
as a gorilla. A gorilla would have raised more attention i think.
30 good one Oct 30th, 2008 at 6:21 pm

watched this at work in a marketing dept. — maybe 4-5 out of 20 people saw the gorilla… haha… while watching, i almost blurted something outloud about the gorilla but didn’t. We all counted 17 passes though for the white team. THANKS!
31 F Oct 31st, 2008 at 11:38 am

Wow !! I got 14 counts and the gorilla was doing silly tricks. Truthfully I did this exercise the other way around I watched it and saw the gorilla and watched it again to count the balls.

Take what you can out of this.

F
32 wicklamulla Nov 17th, 2008 at 6:17 am

LOL i counted 15 passes but i didn’t see the gorilla till the second viewing ! made me laugh me head off tghough !!!!
33 MissMe Dec 21st, 2008 at 7:14 am

LOL

This is so funny! I noticed this wierd guy in a furry suit and a ski mask(lol, wes). But I counted 14 passes. I wonder how many passes there are exactly? ROFL

-MissMe
34 Anthony Mar 20th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

This is really cool. I just sent this to my work and will use it for my presentation. This fits perfectly into the sales industry as there is so much opportunity out there that we just miss. Thanks for the video!!
35 Kala Mar 22nd, 2009 at 11:18 am

In reply to *BrokenJohnny* this experiment has everything to do with choice and perceptual blindness and not if a person is a ” worthless, mindless sheep”. If anyone is concentrating so hard on the number of throws, their brain will not process the arrival of the gorilla. You should read up on both of the blindnesses on Wikipedia. The links are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice_blindness
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_blindness

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Can you trust your mind?

35 Responses to “Can you trust your mind?”