#2. Classic attention experiment (1‑minute video)

126 Comments

1. Paul M. Hoffman on December 14, 2006 at 11:09

   So… how many times did the dam kids pass the balls around? I count­ed 37. Might I add, what the hell was that dam goril­la doing walk­ing around in a high­scool, some­one could have been killed. Goril­la’s belong in a jun­gle or exploit­ed in a zoo. LOL

   
   
   
2. Alvaro on December 15, 2006 at 3:48

   A goril­la? and did you also see the fly­ing pig? :-)

   
   
   
3. Kitsune on February 2, 2007 at 1:43

   Did any­one else notice the danc­ing Goril­la pass­ing by? O_o

   
   
   
4. Brian Egedy on May 25, 2007 at 11:42

   well, yes, i noticed the goril­la. it got in the way of sev­er­al of the hand­offs and i was quite annoyed. i count­ed 28.

   
   
   
5. Stephanie on June 7, 2007 at 4:56

   I saw the goril­la and I count­ed 31 handoffs.

   
   
   
6. g on August 14, 2007 at 4:46

   nooooooooo, I did not see the damn goril­la (until I went back and watched it again!)
   And I had 30 to 31 hand­offs! They did not ask me to count the gorillas…just the hand offs!

   
   
   
7. Alvaro on August 15, 2007 at 10:49

   Hap­py to see that all of you are enjoy­ing the experiment :-)

   
   
   
8. yol on August 22, 2007 at 11:02

   25?

   
   
   
9. yon on September 13, 2007 at 4:58

   30?

   
   
   
10. Alvaro on September 13, 2007 at 7:17

    No, there was only 1 Gorilla…you would prob­a­bly have noticed 25 or 30 of them :-)

    
    
    
11. Espen on October 2, 2007 at 12:28

    I saw the goril­la, I thought it was there to psy­che me out so I would miss some pass­es. I count­ed 37 pass­es, how many are there really?

    
    
    
12. Student on October 4, 2007 at 3:50

    My AP Pysch teacher showed us this today, but he told us to ignore the peo­ple in black shirts com­plete­ly and only count the pass­es made by the peo­ple in the white shirts. As a result of this selec­tive atten­tion exper­i­ment, only 4 peo­ple in our 30+ per­son class (I was one of them) saw the goril­la on the first time around. Very amusing.

    
    
    
13. Alvaro on October 4, 2007 at 6:09

    Hel­lo stu­dent, great to hear there is a con­nec­tion between our blog and AP Psych classes!

    were you able to count the pass­es as well?

    
    
    
14. mikaal on October 18, 2007 at 1:43

    31

    
    
    
15. FreeBee on October 18, 2007 at 6:31

    I count­ed around 30 hand offs, but I’m SURE I may have missed a few. There was an APE in the way.

    Not that I reg­is­tered her as such — I was­n’t pay­ing atten­tion to any­thing but the balls — until I read the arti­cle and then watched it a sec­ond time. In fact, the first time, I noticed that ppl were con­stant­ly block­ing view one way or anoth­er… The fact that an Ape joined in to help them con­fuse me, escape my atten­tion completely.

    
    
    
16. JFargo on October 25, 2007 at 8:25

    Now, grant­ed, I’m work­ing while doing this, but I think I count­ed 32 passes.

    Where can we get the answer?

    
    
    
17. j on October 25, 2007 at 11:23

    My AP PSYCH teacher showed this to us yes­ter­day. Amaz­ingg. No one in the saw the goril­la. crazy stuff

    
    
    
18. Scott on October 27, 2007 at 6:02

    I count­ed 30 pass­es but did not notice the goril­la until I read the comments.

    
    
    
19. jmalone on November 28, 2007 at 5:58

    I coun­t’d 28 but the goril­la freaked me out so i missed a few passes…but then when i saw the duck .….

    
    
    
20. Jimmy on November 29, 2007 at 4:57

    Well, I only count­ed 29 pass­es, and like some­one else said, I saw the goril­la, but thought it was there to dis­tract from count­ing the passes. 

    After read­ing the web­site this indi­vid­ual linked to, I real­ize that the point isn’t to count the balls accu­rate­ly (will prob­a­bly nev­er get a straight answer on that one) but to show that most peo­ple will just sim­ply miss the gorilla.

    So yay if you saw it the first time, and even yay if you had to be told!

    
    
    
21. Mart Cabr on December 1, 2007 at 5:32

    32 goril­las

    
    
    
22. deepti on December 7, 2007 at 7:27

    i count­ed 22 pass­es. what’s the cor­rect answer.

    
    
    
23. Dumbstruck on December 12, 2007 at 9:27

    I can’t believe I NEVER saw the Goril­la! All of you who did see it, bra­vo! And I thought I was so smart…

    
    
    
24. Abhijit on December 13, 2007 at 7:35

    I have noticed 25 times hands change of the basketball.

    
    
    
25. Michael on December 17, 2007 at 10:34

    I did see the goril­la but it did­n’t have any­thing to do with what I was doing so I ignored it after notic­ing it come in. : P

    I count­ed 31.