Do The Test

Totally awesome! Great find Kyle. :)

This is a well known experiment in psychology. There are a couple of these on Youtube as well. I have seen it a couple of times except that they used a gorilla in theirs.

Well this supposedly shows that people are not very observant but what it really shows is that people are able to focus and bloc out irrelevant information which is exactly what you are trying to do when you are watching for oner thing and blocking out other distractions.

Of course when your driving your supposed to be watching for anything and everything that might be on the road.

Found it:

http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/2..._shirts_ex.html

That's a great ad. Gotta get that out more around here!

yeah, i know blah blah blah you're not supposed to see the bear the first time, i've heard all sorts of people bitching about it. the point is, if it makes even one person go "hey, if i missed that bear right in front of my face, maybe this is happening a lot more often when i drive?" then it's done its job.

I did not post the other links to dis your post. I just thought some might like to look into it some more. I don't believe that what was represented on that test correlates to spotting a cyclist on the road. The test is not about that cognitive process. It is effective and fun and may make people think (for about a minute), but it is not accurate. How many people that saw this would consciously say to themselves "Hey there might be a cyclist out there today, I will be more vigilant"? How do you will yourself to be more vigilant and sustain it?
Look further if you like.

The guy to look for is:

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/CB.html


Daniel J. Simons

Visual cognition, perception, attention, and memory. Most of my recent research has focused on the cognitive underpinnings of our experience of a stable and continuous visual world. One line of research focuses on change blindness. These failures to notice large changes to scenes suggest that we are aware of far less of our visual world than we think. Related studies explore what aspects of our environment automatically capture attention and what objects and events go unnoticed. Such studies reveal the surprising extent of inattentional blindness - the failure to notice unusual and salient events in their visual world when attention is otherwise engaged and the events are unexpected. Other active research interests include scene perception, object recognition, visual memory, visual fading, attention, and driving and distraction. Research in my laboratory adopts methods ranging from real-world and video-based approaches to computer-based psychophysical techniques, and it includes basic behavioral measures, eye tracking, simulator studies, and training studies. This diversity of approaches helps establish closer links between basic research on the mechanisms of attention and the real-world implications and consequences of our findings.

Representative Publications:

Simons, D., Lleras, A., Martinez-Conde, S., Slichter, D., Caddigan, E., & Nevarez, G. (2006). Induced visual fading of complex images. Journal of Vision, 6(10), 1093-1101, http://journalofvision.org/6/10/9/, doi:10.1167/6.10.9.
Franconeri, S. L., Hollingworth, A., & Simons (2005). Do new objects capture attention? Psychological Science, 16, 275-281.
Simons, D. J., & Rensink, R. A. (2005). Change blindness: Past, present, and future. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(1), 16-20.
Most, S. B., Scholl, B. J., Clifford, E. R., & Simons, D. J. (2005). What you see is what you set: Sustained inattentional blindness and the capture of awareness. Psychological Review, 112(1), 217-242.
Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074.

Personally,
I think drivers go into state of comatose when in the mobile living room.
Music soothing the ears.
Comfy seat under their rear.
Now DVDs and GPS enabling their select few cells that are alive.

Would be nice if they were in the same state as most of us cyclists out there:
cold as hell so all senses are reacting 150%
icy at time so reactive to the ground beneath and looking ahead.
typically up on all fours, so no comfort level.
MP3 playing "hell raising" NiN or such, so all chemicals firing according to the beat.
(I'll get pooh poohed on for that one, but sht, if they can have music then so can I...)

drivers have it easy in the mobile living room.

What would be nice to see:
Hard seat in the vehicle (hard metal seat with a layer of road crap layering it)
no heat so mind is in motion (no windows)
some sensory stimulating music playing to keep all areas of the brain alive or a loud annoying voice stating every so often - are you alive!!! If they do not respond then this big azz alarm goes off and lights start flashing etc...
maybe something to kick start the heart every so often (defibrillator ? or similar) - for the older folks that barely have enough punch to push the pedal.

It is strange how they are more protected than us - physically, socially and legally.
What we have bought into as a society I guess.
Such is the Americas.

The more of us out there, the more the masses have to be on the look out for us. Chaos is a good thing. Keeps the mind alive and well. In a constant state of awareness.

or talking on a cellphone to keep their mind alert



Yep.