Inattentional Blindness

Failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected stimulus while attention is engaged elsewhere — the gorilla result.

Specifications & Metrics

type

Cognitive

introduced

1992

originator

Arien Mack and Irvin Rock (term); popularized by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999)

Core Principles & Analysis

• In Simons and Chabris's video, roughly half of viewers counting basketball passes missed a person in a gorilla suit walking through.
• Detection dropped further when the task was harder, showing attention, not vision, was the limiting factor.
• Simons and Chabris took the term from Arien Mack and Irvin Rock, whose studies from 1992 named the phenomenon.

Sources

• Simons & Chabris (1999), Perception — DOI 10.1068/p2952