Why Invisible Gorillas Matter
Daniel Simons has become one of the most influential young cognitive scientists in the last decade, co-authoring smash-hit studies in two different fields. He's best-known for his "Gorillas in our Midst" study, co-authored with Christopher Chabris, where viewers are shown a 45-second video of six students tossing around basketballs. Viewers are instructed to carefully count only the passes between players dressed in white. What they aren't told is that halfway through the video, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit will walk into the middle of the screen, beat her chest, and walk off. Amazingly, when viewers don't know about the gorilla in advance, about half of them miss it completely. Seed Magazine interviews Simons.
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