Simons and Chabris (1999) Gorillas in our Midst: Sustained inattentional
blindness for dynamic events.
Key Words
Change blindness
Inattentional blindness
Opaque
Transparent
Superimposition
Background Moray had previously researched attention, investigating auditory attention. Simons and Chabris were
interested in building on this knowledge and investigating visual attention, particularly inattentional
(4 marker) blindness. This is the phenomenon that when attention is diverted, observers often fail to perceive an
unexpected object. Previous research had already been conducted in this field for example by Mack and
Rock who investigated computer-based displays, where participants were given a task to do and then
presented with an unexpected object, such as a smiley face. They found that observers failed to see it.
However, this method was criticised for being unrepresentative of how visual attention works in real life.
Neisser investigated further, using video-based displays. Participants were asked to watch basketball
players passing the ball and count the amount of passes, during which a woman with an umbrella walks
across the screen. Neisser found that the majority of participants failed to see the woman. However, the
research was criticised for being a poor quality video. Both of these studies provide evidence for
inattentional blindness, yet Simons and Chabris were eager to enhance the work of both researchers
making the task more representative of inattentional blindness in real life.
Aim 1. To investigate whether particularly unusual events are likely to be detected (type of event)
2. To investigate if a more difficult task increases the rate of inattentional blindness (task difficulty)
3. To investigate the effect of superimposition and transparency of characters in a video (video
quality)
Sample 192 undergraduates via volunteer sampling. Equally distributed across conditions.
Originally 228- but 36 were eliminated as they would have reduced the validity of results for various
reasons- i.e. demand characteristics.
Research Laboratory experiment.
Method Independent measures design.
IV- participant conditions:
4 conditions- 1. Transparent / Umbrella 2. Transparent/ Gorilla. 3. Opaque/ Umbrella 4. Opaque/ Gorilla.
4 Task conditions- 1. White/Easy 2. White/Hard 3. Black/Easy 4. Black/Hard
Therefore 16 individual conditions. Participants took part in one condition
i.e. Transparent/Umbrella/White/Easy.
Procedure 1. Participants were tested alone
2. They were given instructions to count the number of passes that the basketball players passed.
Depending on their condition, they were either in the easy condition (counting the number of
passes) or hard condition (counting how many bounce and aerial passes)
3. Whilst watching the unusual event would happen and either a lady with an umbrella or a gorilla
would walk across the screen whilst the basketball players were playing
4. Afterwards, the participants were asked questions ‘Did you notice anything unusual?’ if they
answered yes, they were asked to give details
Results Overall, 54% of participants noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to notice it.
Findings in relation to:
Aim 1- More participants noticed the lady with the umbrella than the gorilla
Aim 2- More participants noticed the unexpected event in the easy condition than the hard condition
Aim 3- More participants noticed the unexpected event in the opaque condition compared to the
transparent
Conclusion Conclusions in relation to each aim:
Aim 1- People are more likely to notice unexpected events if they are visually similar to e vent paid
attention to.
Aim 2- Inattentional blindness is more likely when task is hard.
Aim 3- Inattentional blindness occurs more frequently in cases of superimposition.
Strengths Ethics
Informed consent, debrief.
Reliability
High internal- Standardised procedure- Same actors in the video, all videos were the same length, same
sequence of shots passed, all pp’s tested alone.
High external- Quantitative data collected.
Data
Both quantitative and qualitative- used to check response bias on pp’s after watching the videos.
Useful- Adds to our knowledge of attentional processes, can inform driver safety.
Individual explanations- Participants inattentional blindness ability.
Psych as a science- high controls-cause and effect.
Validity
High internal- Controls-cause and effect.
High concurrent- with Neissers research. Both found that p’s can entirely miss an unexpected event if
focusing attention elsewhere.
Sample –Large, adding to confidence in the results.
Weakness Validity
Low ecological- unrepresentative task.
Low Population- All students
Sample bias- all student so may not be able to generalise their performance due to better cognitive
abilities.
Ethnocentrism- Other cross-cultural research has found differences in perception across cultures,
therefore S & C results may be relevant to certain cultures only.
