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Selective attention tests show how people can be unaware of certain visual stimuli when they focus on other aspects. Dr. Daniel Simons’ famous test involves counting basketball passes while a person in a gorilla suit walks across the scene, demonstrating inattentional blindness. These tests reveal how the brain processes attention and memory.
A selective attention test is used to show that people are often unaware of certain visual stimuli when they focus on other aspects of what they see. This type of test is used to show how little people look at the world around them and how they can miss unusual events when they focus on a task. There are many different types of tests that can be devised, though the most famous was developed by Dr. Daniel Simons, a psychology professor.
In Dr. Simons’ selective attention test, a test subject watches a video of six people passing two basketballs around. Three of the people are dressed in black and the other three are dressed in white. Test subjects are asked to count the number of times the people in white pass the ball and to ignore the actions of the people in black. Visually, the video contains a great deal of information because all six people are constantly moving, and the test subject must track the movement of one of the basketballs in the video.
In the middle of this selective attention test, a person dressed in a gorilla suit walks across the scene, pausing in the center to beat his chest before exiting the video at the other end. The test subjects are then asked how many times the basketball was passed between the players in white. Once they answer, they are asked if they have noticed the gorilla. Almost half of the people who participated in the study did not notice the gorilla’s presence.
This selective attention test demonstrates that people may not notice things entering their field of vision when they are engaged in other activities, such as counting. This is because the brain has a limited amount of working memory available and dedicates it to the task at hand rather than observing the environment. This effect is called inattentive blindness.
Psychologists can use a selective attention test to learn more about how the brain processes attention and memory. Use of the “invisible gorilla” selective attention test demonstrated inattentional blindness, while further tests developed by Dr. Simons also demonstrated that subjects who expected to see one thing, such as a gorilla, often do not notice other changes made to the environment. These tests also show that people are often wrong about how much they notice and remember what they saw.
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