Enter the Gorilla

• The book opens with a description of a research project the authors did. It involved having subjects count the number of times a basketball was passed by people on one team and not by people on the other team. During the video, a researcher appeared in a gorilla suit. About 50% of the subjects were so focused on the task that they did not notice the gorilla. Here is the link to the video used in the experiment. The gorilla experiment illustrates the illusion of attention. We experience far less of our visual world that we think we do. We are often unaware of aspects that fall outside of our current focus of attention.

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