Ishbadiddle: Use Your Illusions

Use Your Illusions

I ran across this site full of great optical illusions on Eyebeam reBlog. Warning: do not view while drunk, or before operating heavy machinery.

Which reminded me of another site I'd seen blogged about. First: go to this site. You'll have to wait a bit for the video to download, it's 7 MB, and requires Java to be enabled in your browser. While you're waiting, go drink a glass of water. Not required, but you can always use more water.

OK, is it downloaded yet? Good. Now, before you press the green "Play" button, here are your instructions: count the number of times the players in the white shirts pass the ball to each other. Go watch the video, and wait to read the rest of this until you've counted the passes.

Did you notice anything unusual in the video? No?

Watch it again, but this time don't bother counting the passes. Just watch the whole thing.

Pretty freaky, eh?

The cognitive researchers who put this together call it Inattentional Blindness. You can see lots more examples here.

Kind of reminds me of Douglas Adams' SEP field...

M E-L posted this on May 24, 2004
It is filed under Science & Technology

It is also indexed with the following tags: Cognition | Weird Science |

Comments

CMM wrote:

Holy cow! The movie worked on me: I totally missed the gorilla-suit guy until the second viewing. Creepy!

Interestingly, once you've seen the gorilla, there's no way to "un-see" him on subsequent viewings. I watched a third time and tried counting white-shirt passes again, but I knew the gorilla was coming and couldn't ignore him.

Comment #1 :: link :: May 26, 2004 08:54 AM

Tk wrote:

Lorem ipsit dolor sit amen, I’m adding text so that I don’t spoil things for anyone else with the comment exerpt thing.

************************
Meh. I didn’t see the gorilla suit walk into the frame, but I did see it and then saw it walk out. Must be why I’m such a good driver. :-)

Interesting concept, though. I’m sure there’s some link to the visual side and the non-visual side. That is, there might be some connection to what some groups are finding, namely that it’s not the holding your mobile phone to your ear while you are driving that’s bad, it’s the talking to someone and not thinking about your driving that’s bad.

Comment #2 :: link :: May 26, 2004 01:27 PM

David Powell wrote:

Hello
Please can you help me.
I have heard of this video with the gorilla and the teams bouncing the ball.
I have never seen it can you tell me is there a web site I can view it on and what is it called
Thank you in advance for any and all help with this matter
Best Wishes
David Powell

Comment #3 :: link :: September 23, 2004 04:40 PM

David Powell wrote:

Comment #4 :: link :: September 23, 2004 04:40 PM

David Powell wrote:

Comment #5 :: link :: September 23, 2004 04:41 PM

ME-L wrote:

Well, you *could* click on the link in this post...

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