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S/o Selective Attention Test


dancingmama
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I've seen this before and another one like  it.  The context in which I've seen it used is in training lifeguards (I train lifeguards and swim instructors among other things). It illustrates that if you predispose yourself to only see certain details you will miss other things (other things which can be quite important to keeping recreational swimmers safe). So, in the context of my work, young people are being made aware they need to not look for just a few things. 

 

 

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I really didn't see it.  And none of my kids did either.  

 

I was only looking at white shirts, and was actively not looking at black shirts.  I was told they didn't matter, so I wasn't focused on them.  It did surprise me to not notice a gorilla, though!  That was educational!

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I was having such a hard time following the motion of the people to count, I only saw the blur/form going through but didn't see what it was. Watched it again, knowing it was coming, and still couldn't see it. I had to stop and actually look, actively, at the gorilla, and then I totally lost the basketball count. 

 

So yes, if someone is getting both the gorilla and the player pass count, they must be able to process more.

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That's another question.  Did the people who saw the the gorilla count correctly?  The kids and I got the right number of passes, but didn't see the gorilla.  Is there a limit to what most people can take in at once?

 

I did not.

I counted 13.  But I suspected I had missed one or two at the very beginning, so I kind of "gave up" in a sense.

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I also find it hard to believe you could miss the gorilla.  I counted correctly.

 

I am pretty good at multi-tasking, though, and splitting attention between multiple things at once - I work from home (rather a lot) and have 6 kids :)  I am also quite bright.

 

On the other hand, I have poor executive function skills and am supremely distract-able.  So if that video had gone on for say 10 minutes, I might have forgotten by the end why I'd started watching in the first place.

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I've never researched it, but I wonder if the result (seeing the gorilla the first time or not) is related to right/left brain reliance.

 

There's another version of this floating around with a gorilla, but also adding something else.

That's an interesting idea. I was thinking that I read once that children who later test gifted focus on different parts of a picture. I think it was that the gifted kids focus on the whole picture, and sometimes miss what is in the foreground, but the average kids focus on the main part of the picture. I could have that wrong.

 

Eta. I'm not sure what my comment had to do with the gorilla thing, other than just pondering different ways brains process things and seek information.

Edited by Guinevere
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That's an interesting idea. I was thinking that I read once that children who later test gifted focus on different parts of a picture. I think it was that the gifted kids focus on the whole picture, and sometimes miss what is in the foreground, but the average kids focus on the main part of the picture. I could have that wrong.

 

Eta. I'm not sure what my comment had to do with the gorilla thing, other than just pondering different ways brains process things and seek information.

 

Well I'm very logic oriented. I skipped grades (my family moved so missed gifted tested in the new school district and it was the 70s so grade skipping was still acceptable). 

 

If you tell me to focus on one thing, that is all I look at. I just hyper focus and ignore extraneous matter. Because the direction at the beginning was to count passes so I just block everything else and focus on the accuracy of that one task.  If the direction had been to just watch the video and report what you saw, I would not have hyperfocused on passes. I would have looked at everything so I could report as many details as possible. 

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That's another question. Did the people who saw the the gorilla count correctly? The kids and I got the right number of passes, but didn't see the gorilla. Is there a limit to what most people can take in at once?

I counted 13 but gave up soon after the gorilla appear. The video was too boring after a while. Maybe if the people were wearing more colorful T-shirt’s instead of all black or all white. I find NBA boring too and rather watch soccer.

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I counted 13 but gave up soon after the gorilla appear. The video was too boring after a while. Maybe if the people were wearing more colorful T-shirt’s instead of all black or all white. I find NBA boring too and rather watch soccer.

Oh see that's funny. I was actually working HARD to keep up with it. I was totally overwhelmed and in a blur. 

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Thinking about it, there was a moment when my focus was drawn away from the white shirts, a moment of confusion. I now know that was when I had to actively choose to not see the gorilla. This is so interesting. To think that it is possible to choose to look at something, and still not see it.

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I counted 13 passes and I missed a few because I was so distracted by the gorilla. It's interesting for me because whenever I do those right/left brained tests, I always come out 50/50. I'm also cross dominant being right handed, but I have a dominant left eye and left leg. My degree is in a field that requires both left and right brain thinking and my military trained son has commented on my excellent situational awareness. I really think I use both sides of my brain and it's a problem because I am very easily distracted and have trouble focusing on one particular thing. It's probably why I have half finished projects all over my house.

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I counted right and saw it, but it was distracting and felt like I missed one or two. I thought my number was going to be wrong by a couple and was surprised it wasn’t.

 

But this is my life. Everything other people just love about classrooms and school books? Lots of colors and sidebars and graphics? I dispise it. Because I don’t see this or that. I see it all at once.

 

It’s also likely why I can keep excellent tabs on manageing a large family and the household and yet, I’m also one of those people who think Disney looks and sounds like any circle of hell.

 

It can make me very efficient and able to absorb and process a lot of information quickly without as much stress as some other people seem to have.

 

But it can be exhausting in new situations and at the end of the day my brain is still in hyper drive, so I’ve been an insomniac my entire life.

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I didn't see the gorilla at all. I counted 14 passes.

 

So what's it mean? What's the video trying to show?

I don’t think it means anything really. It’s just another example of how our brain selects what we see and hear without our realizing it. Basicly if you decide to focus on one task, your brain selects to ignore other information not related to that task.

 

For example, I bet most couldn’t say what the male:female ratio was either. Or what the background setting was, such as were they outdoors or indoors? A basketball court or ? What color was the wall?

 

I can answer those questions. Because ALL that information stood out to me equally.

 

If I’d been told to tell every detail of one thing, say one person in the group, it would be extremely difficult for me to do that. Very stressful and would take all my concentration. I’d probably have a headache afterwards too.

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I did not see the gorilla at all when I first watched it in the other thread.

 

The point of the exercise is to show that our brains are not like video cameras, as some think, perfectly recording all information. It is to show that people edit out info they don’t think is important. I even *knew* that some other information would turn out to be important, but I thougt it would be s9mething like, “did you notice the players with black shirts never caught a single ball?†Or something like that.

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I just had my 13 yo watch it. She saw it to (she exclaimed when she saw it). I'm flabbergasted.

 

So why would some see it and others not? What makes people more likely to see it?

My working theory is that my ADHD people will be more likely to notice the gorilla. I am good at tasks that require careful concentration on one thing and perform less well at noticing a bunch of unrelated info. Hence, my brains says, “Gorilla? Forget about that; count players!†And so it is just as if I never saw a gorilla at all.

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Ok. So I saw the it. Did people really not see the it?

I felt this way too. I got the correct answer and saw it plain and clear. However, I have Low Latent Inhibition and see all details in most things so I assumed it was just one of my weird rapid detail consumption things lol. Glad it wasn't just me.

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This was presented at an interdisciplinary seminar I attended for health care professionals.  I did not see the gorilla.  They also presented a CT head image with a small carton happy face embedded in the image.  Very of few of the doctors in the group saw the happy face: they were focussed on "reading" the scan for actual pathology.  Everyone else saw the happy face right away.

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Well, I counted a bit wrong but mostly I think in the beginning as it took me a moment to orient myself (what is going on, who is wearing white etc.) and I definitely saw you know what. But quite possibly the title/context made me aware that I had to pay attention to everything. Not sure if the outcome would have been the same if the context had been different.

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Oh see that's funny. I was actually working HARD to keep up with it. I was totally overwhelmed and in a blur.

I have many relatives who would do what the gorilla did when they were kids. So in a way it was a trained skill to keep track of all the young ones while keeping score for the older ones who were playing ball during a family gathering.

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I don’t get it. I had never seen it before. What’s it supposed to mean? I counted 15 and heck yeah I also noticed the chest-beating gorilla. Soooo?

 

 

I don't know, what does it mean when someone counts to 15 but doesn't see the gorilla?  My son saw it immediately and said, 'why is there a gorilla?'  But guess what?  I didn't see the gorilla when I first watched it.

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I don't know, what does it mean when someone counts to 15 but doesn't see the gorilla? My son saw it immediately and said, 'why is there a gorilla?' But guess what? I didn't see the gorilla when I first watched it.

It means you are good at concentrating on a given task, but will miss details your brain tells you are irrelevant.

 

My two attention-challenged sons did see the gorilla. One of them also got the correct number of ball passes, but one said, “12.†In my unscientific opinion, their noticing of the gorilla relates to their ease at multiple simultaneous tasksor, to put the negative spin on it, their distractability.

 

One son said he noticed the gorilla once it was in the center, but then he questioned if it had always been there or only just arrived.

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Do you think that the amount of television/movies/youtube someone watches could be a factor?

 

I saw the gorilla. We don't do TV at all and not much in the way of other video but I also suspect that I'm ADD.

My kids do t watch much tv. But I watch a crap ton. I binge watch for hours very late at night while knitting through insomnia.

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I’m going speculatively answer my own question.

 

It doesn’t mean anything good or bad whether you see the gorilla or not

 

The purpose isn’t to make anyone feel dumber in some way.

 

Because we ALL do it. Even people who see the gorilla, there will be something else in another situation where they might not.

 

The point seems to only be that people need to be aware the brain doesn’t work like they might have thought it did.

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I've seen this kind of video before, and that time, I kept track of what I was supposed to but totally missed the gorilla.

 

I'm not surprised really - I hyper focus when I'm given a task like that.  I have to or I'm overwhelmed by sense information.  I remember back when I was learning to drive, and I hadn't yet enough experience to know what I had to focus on - I was needing to keep my senses totally open.  It was very tiring!

 

It's an introverted focus, essentially - my attention is generally internal unless I "turn it on".  The more open it is the more I have to consciously maintain it.

 

My dh is totally different - very sensory oriented, he notices details in the environment without really thinking about it.  

 

His processing speed tends to be slower though, which I think is related.

Edited by Bluegoat
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Well I'm very logic oriented. I skipped grades (my family moved so missed gifted tested in the new school district and it was the 70s so grade skipping was still acceptable).

 

If you tell me to focus on one thing, that is all I look at. I just hyper focus and ignore extraneous matter. Because the direction at the beginning was to count passes so I just block everything else and focus on the accuracy of that one task. If the direction had been to just watch the video and report what you saw, I would not have hyperfocused on passes. I would have looked at everything so I could report as many details as possible.

This is me. Exactly.

 

It's why I can have a meticulously organised school cupboard and a mess literally everywhere else.

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I've seen this kind of video before, and that time, I kept track of what I was supposed to but totally missed the gorilla.

 

I'm not surprised really - I hyper focus when I'm given a task like that. I have to or I'm overwhelmed by sense information. I remember back when I was learning to drive, and I hadn't yet enough experience to know what I had to focus on - I was needing to keep my senses totally open. It was completely exaughsting.

 

It's an introverted focus, essentially - my attention is generally internal unless I "turn it on". The more open it is the more I have to consciously maintain it.

 

My dh is totally different - very sensory oriented, he notices details in the environment without really thinking about it.

 

His processing speed tends to be slower though, which I think is related.

Yes I am like this. The results didn't surprise me much because I miss this kind of stuff all the time. It's like in Agatha Christe or father brown novels people notice the stuff they are meant to notice - and miss the details.

 

It's why driving and shopping and looking after small children is hellish for people like me... Why do I seem like a hyper anxious mother sometimes? Because I'm the one that will not notice the kid drowning right in front of me if I'm in a conversation about something else interesting. So I have to hyper focus on the kids to keep them alive when they are small.

 

Flip side of this is I can spot a spelling or calculation error a mile away.

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What is weird to me is that I am actually excellent at juggling things and seeing things. And my son is a goose waking up in a new world every day. He can't remember to take the trash out or bring the can in.

Yes, but you're selective about your attention. You probably subconsciously saw it but chose to ignore it. That's kinda how it was with me in the second video I posted. I noticed that there was a change but couldn't quite put my finger on what was different although I could specify what generally had changed, just not the details, if that makes sense?

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I had my kids watch this video this morning.  We were talking about the requirements for two witnesses in Numbers 35 during Bible time and this was an excellent illustration.  Of the five kids who watched it, all of them saw the gorilla except for one.  The interesting thing is that he is probably the most distractible of all the kids so to me, it showed that he was really carefully counting the passes.  Plus, he's all about basketball right now so focusing on the basketball was all-consuming to him as it is when he's watching or playing any basketball game.

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