The visible gorilla : Unexpectedly fast, not physically prominent, objects are perceptible
Meaning Inattentional blindness , the inability to notice unexpected objects if attention is focused on a task, is one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology. It is particularly surprising, in light of research on attentional capture and motion perception, that human observers suffer from this effect even when the unexpected object is moving. Inattentional blindness is commonly interpreted as an unavoidable cognitive deficit—the flip side of on-task. We show that this interpretation is incomplete, as observers can balance the need to focus on task demands with the need to protect themselves from unexpected but potentially important objects by redistributing attention in response to fast motion. This finding is consistent with the view of a fundamentally competent agent operating effectively in an uncertain world. |
Summary
It is widely believed that observers may fail to notice clearly visible unattended objects, even if they are moving. Here, we created parametric tasks to test this belief and report results from three high-powered experiments (total n = 4,493) indicating that this effect is strongly modulated by the speed of the unattended object. Specifically, fast, but not slow, objects are easily perceptible, whether attended to or not. These results suggest that fast motion serves as a powerful exogenous cue that overrides focused attention on the task, demonstrating that fast speeds, not prolonged exposure duration or physical salience, strongly diminish the effects of blindness. lack of attention.
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Research reveals that we can detect the unexpected better than commonly believed
We are quite good at detecting unexpected objects while we are focused on another activity if they move quickly, reveals a new study by a team of researchers at New York University. Their findings cast doubt on a long-held view that our ability to see the unexpected is necessarily impaired when our attention is already directed elsewhere.
“For decades, it has been thought that when we are focused on something relevant, like driving or playing, we do not detect something that unexpectedly enters our field of vision, even if it is clearly visible and moving,” says Pascal. Wallisch, associate clinical professor in the Data Science Center and Department of Psychology at New York University and senior author of the paper, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Our study questions the generality of this view because it shows that people, while focused on a task, are very capable of noticing unexpected, fast-moving objects. However, our research confirms that we are, in fact, less adept at noticing these same objects when they move slowly.”
The research team, which also included Wayne Mackey, Michael Karlovich and David Heeger, focused their study on "inattentional blindness" , the inability to notice unexpected objects if attention is focused on a task. This phenomenon was evident in the widely cited “invisible gorilla experiment” of the 1990s. In that study, participants, who watched a video of students passing basketballs, did not notice a person in a gorilla costume appear unexpectedly because They already had the task and were involved in counting the number of passes between players wearing white shirts.
This and similar studies characterized one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology, inattentional blindness, as an inevitable flip side of on-task concentration, and essentially as a deficit.
In the study published in PNAS , the NYU research team sought to better understand the nature of inattentional blindness through a series of experiments and, specifically, whether our cognitive processing was really as limited as this previous work suggested. .
They replicated the invisible gorilla experiment with more than 1,500 research participants, but included several new conditions. In the original 1999 experiment, the gorilla moved slowly and upright, like a human (which it was!).
In the new PNAS research , research participants saw the gorilla (yes, also a human dressed in a gorilla costume) in additional ways. Specifically, the "NYU gorilla" moved at various speeds: in some conditions, only slightly faster than the "original gorilla" and, in others, substantially faster than the original gorilla. During these experiments, as in the original experiment, research participants were tasked with counting the number of basketball passes made by players wearing white or black jerseys.
A video of the experiment can be seen here.
Overall, the results showed that participants, while performing the pass-counting task, were more likely to detect the NYU gorilla if it moved substantially faster than in the original 1999 experiment or if it jumped instead of jumping. walk.
To ensure that these findings generalize beyond gorilla spotting, the researchers conducted a series of experiments, with approximately 3,000 other participants, that replicated the principles of the invisible gorilla study. In these, research participants were asked to count how many randomly moving dots of a given color crossed a center line while an unexpectedly moving object (UMO)—a triangle—traversed the screen at various speeds.
As with the gorilla study, participants were more likely to detect the triangle the faster it moved. Importantly, the authors note that the same was not observed for triangles that moved slower than the dots, which is notable given that the slower-moving triangles are on the screen substantially longer. This finding also rules out the following: that the salience of fast-moving UMOs is simply due to the physical dissimilarity of the task-relevant points. As the authors write in the article:
"(Our) findings...contribute to the ongoing debate about the impact of physical salience on inattentional blindness , suggesting that it is fast speeds specifically, not the physical salience of a feature in general, that catch attention".
The findings could also have evolutionary implications. The classic view of inattentional blindness would leave a task-focused organism vulnerable to unexpected threats. These new PNAS findings, in contrast, suggest that organisms possess a "sentinel" system that constantly monitors the environment. This system alerts organisms to potential threats, specifically, fast-moving attacking predators.
"Unexpected, fast-moving objects appear to override an organism’s task focus," says Wallisch. “This will allow you to notice and react to the new potential threat, improving your chances of survival.”
The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DGE 1342536).
