Blindness and the Invisible Gorilla

Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind, even to stimuli that normally attract attention. Most dramatic demonstration was offered by christopher chabri and daniel simons in their book, the invisible gorilla. They constructed a short film of two teams passing basket balls, one team wearing white shirts, the other wearing black. The viewers are instructed to count the number of passes made by the white team, ignoring the black players. This task is difficult and completely absorbing. No one who watches the video without that task would miss the gorilla. We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.