What Gorilla?

Interesting article I picked up here and here: Did you see the gorilla?

Basically, the article says researchers have found out that our Stone Age brains may simply be unable to cope with the pace of modern life.


Scientists have gathered some remarkable evidence which shows that it is possible to see something without observing it, in research that sheds new light on traffic accidents that occur when a driver "looked but failed to see", and other examples of mayhem and mishap in everyday life.


Some of the interesting research and its corresponding data they've come up with were fascinating and just plain funny.

One experiment had people who were walking across a college campus being asked by a stranger for directions. During the resulting talk, two men would pass by carrying a wooden door between the stranger and the subjects.

Afterwards, researchers found out that half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger had been substituted with a man who was of different height, of different build and who sounded different. He was also wearing different clothes.

In another experiment, subjects watched a videotape of a handful of people playing basketball and were asked to count the passes made by one of the teams.


Around half failed to spot a woman dressed in a gorilla suit who walked slowly across the scene for nine seconds, even though this hairy interloper had passed between the players and stopped to face the camera and thump her chest.


Likewise, researchers said that...


The effect is so striking that some of them refused to accept they were looking at the same tape and thought that it was a different version of the video, one edited to include the ape.


So. That would explain that big grey elephant I saw walking down EDSA...