This is a very simple test.
One thing will change in this photo. And one thing only.
Try to spot the change.
I’ll give you a few seconds to figure it out.
Here’s what changed.
See the clay pots on the table?
They’re brown now. Before, they were grey.
But if you didn’t notice, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most people don’t notice what’s right in
front of them. Even if they think they would. That’s the part I find most interesting. That
people think they’ll notice things that they actually don’t. You can make changes
that are fairly big, even bigger than the one you made, and people will miss those.
Psychology professor Dan Simons of the University of Illinois is famous for his
experiment where people were so busy counting the times those dressed in white passed a basketball
that they failed to see the gorilla walk past in plain sight!
Why is it that we fail to see things that are right in front of us?
Part of it is just we have limits on how much we can focus on and pay attention to.
If the visible structure of the eye is like a camera lens, then the retina,
the inner layer of tissue at the back of the eye, is like the film inside the camera.
This delicate organ forms an image by collecting light reflected from the surrounding environment.
But within the retina, very little of it is actually “high-resolution”
consisting of “fovea” that does complicated tasks like identifying faces.
Most of our vision is low resolution.
So we can’t see everything.
We are bombarded by so many stimuli that it exceeds the capacity of our brain.
So we ignore most of what we “see”.
If you think the clay pot example was too subtle, you’re about to see one
of Dr. Simons’ experiments showing an EXTREME example of how much some of us fail to notice.
An unsuspecting pedestrian is giving directions to the guy
on the left who is actually one of the experimenters in this study.
A door passes between them, and the first experimenter is replaced by someone else.
And the man giving directions has no clue he’s now talking to a different person!
Eight of the 15 people approached in the study didn’t know the person they
were talking to was replaced with someone else.
After the change we’ll say hey, did you notice anything unusual? It’s kind of rude,
they could have gone around us. They really had no idea they were talking to someone else.
And he says those who did notice the person changed kept giving directions
anyway because they felt the social pressure to do that. So,
what are the implications of change blindness in everyday life?
If you forget who your waiter is, that’s natural.
It would be easier to remember if something about them sticks out and grabs your attention.
Like if they had blue hair.
Our failure to see change is why we tend not to notice continuity errors in films.
If you’re patting yourself on the back thinking you’re great at noticing mistakes in movies,
well, here’s some news for you.
Clip People who notice them are convinced they always notice them. But of course, they’re
only aware of the ones they happened to notice. They’re not aware of all the ones they missed!
There’s another more serious real-life implication of change blindness.
It could explain why eyewitness testimony may sometimes be unreliable,
leading to a witness wrongly identifying a suspect.
So, now that you’re more aware of how unaware you are, time for another test.
You’re about to see two images switching back and forth rapidly.
Keep your gaze fixed on the center.
And see if you can spot the difference between them.
So, did you see what changed?
If not, pay attention to the man on the right wearing the jeans.
But just like before: keep your gaze on the center so
that only your attention has moved, not your gaze.
Did you catch his jeans changing color from blue to brown?
Now that you know what’s changing,
you can see the change happening for yourself because you’re focused on it.
If you don’t focus on what’s changing you're simply not going to see the change.
How about one more example?
Did you notice what changed this time?
Take a look at the boat on the right. It has disappeared.
Seeing is difficult. Because we are limited in our sight, we have to let so much go.
There are some life lessons here, too.
Perhaps what you truly need is in front of you.
But you can’t see it because you’re focused on something else.
In other words, you may not have seen what you truly need.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this video.
So does this make you better at detecting changes? Maybe. Maybe not. For example,
did you notice that my shirt changed throughout this video?
Leave a comment if you did.
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Thanks for watching. For Newsthink, I’m Cindy Pom