Surprising Studies, Vol 1
Surprising Studies of Visual Awareness, Vol 1 (2003)
20 striking demonstrations that can induce failures of awareness. Includes the famous "gorilla/basketball" video.
You can also get all of the contents of Volume 1 on the Volume 1+2 DVD. The Volume 1+2 DVD lets you access all the demonstrations from both Volume 1 and Volume 2 during a single presentation, without having to change DVDs.
Features:
-- Striking demonstrations that induce failures of awareness
-- Original footage from scientific experiments
-- Rapid, menu-driven access to each demo
-- Scientific explanations for each type of demo
-- General instructions for each type of demo
Contents:
The DVD includes the following four categories of videos:
1. The Flicker Task
A photograph of a scene appears briefly and then is replaced by a blank screen. After a fraction of a second, a changed version of the scene appears. The original and changed images alternate for about 10 seconds. The task, originally developed by Ronald Rensink and his colleagues, reveals an astounding inability to detect even large changes to scenes. People typically need a number of alternations to find the change. The DVD includes five examples of varied difficulty.
2. The Gradual Task
A photograph of a scene appears for about 12 seconds, and while it is fully visible, something in the scene gradually changes. The task, developed by Daniel Simons and his students, again reveals a surprising blindness to large changes. Many people fail to spot the change with just one viewing. Moreover, they are often surprised by their failure - once they know what is changing, they find it hard to believe that they failed to see it. The DVD includes five examples of varied difficulty.
3. The Selective Attention Task
Viewers try to count the number of times one group of players passes a basketball or the number of times one set of shapes touches the sides of the display. About halfway through each video, something unexpectedly enters the display. Strikingly, many people fail to notice these unexpected objects, even though they are fully visible and distinctive. The first example in the category is the famous gorilla/basketball video in which a person wearing a gorilla suit crossed through the display. Many observers fail to see it, and they typically are shocked that they could have missed it. These videos, created by Daniel Simons and his students, show that when people focus their attention on a task, they often fail to see unexpected objects and events.
4. The Movie Task
When people view motion pictures, they are able to understand the content and implications of a conversation, but they often fail to notice when objects or people change from one shot to the next. The videos in this section were used as stimuli by Daniel Simons and his colleagues to explore perception, attention, and memory. Four videos depict simple conversations between two actors, and one portrays a brief action (answering the phone). The task is simply to watch the video, and afterwards, to try to answer questions about it. Although people can recall the meaning and contents of the videos in some detail, their memory is far from perfect...