Chapter 1. Visual Attention: Piecing Things Together

Short Description

People often show a surprising lack of awareness of changes in their visual environment.

Long Description

Daniel Simons and Chris Chabris, of Harvard University, conduct an experiment in which research participants approach a counter where a male experimenter hands them a consent form. After they sign and return it to the experimenter, he takes it and ducks behind the counter. A different male experimenter stands up, hands the participants a packet of information, and directs them to a hallway where they are asked a series of questions.

In most cases, the research participants fail to notice the change in experimenters. They report their experience in some detail without any reference to the different men. Even when they are specifically asked if they noticed anything unusual, they report that they did not. When the participants are finally told about the change in experimenters, they express amusement and genuine disbelief.

Why do only a minority of people notice the change? So far research has not answered that question. Daniel Simons speculates that it may reflect an important individual difference variable but it may also be sheer coincidence. That is, at any given time, some people may happen to attend to a feature that changes, perhaps an aspect of the experimenters’ clothing, while other participants’ attention may happen to be focused elsewhere.

Questions