Brain Games: Attention Challenge

by

(hat tip: Mind Hacks).

basketballPlease try this exper­i­ment, con­ceived by Simons and Chabris for their now clas­sic study, and now pack­aged in a nicer video pro­duc­tion. You will watch a brief video clip show­ing two teams, and your chal­lenge is to count the TOTAL num­ber of times that the bas­ket­balls change hands.

Click Here to view the Bas­ket­ball Exper­i­ment clip.

You can read about the fas­ci­nat­ing results here, and read the full study on sus­tained inat­ten­tion­al blind­ness (PDF).

Cred­it for pic: Haines World

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. diart says

    I even had to rewind the clip because I did­n’t think i could have missed that moon walk!!
    It is amaz­ing what you dont see if you’re not look­ing specifically

  2. Alvaro says

    Yes, it is…and not just “what you dont see if you’re not look­ing specif­i­cal­ly” but what you don’t see because you are look­ing specif­i­cal­ly for some­thing else…which prob­a­bly is what we do dur­ing most of our careers

  3. Victoria says

    I was so proud of myself because I count­ed all 13 pass­es cor­rect­ly… until the ques­tion about the bear popped up. Bear, what bear? I absolute­ly did not see it, of course. Fun video!

  4. Mike Logan says

    Could­n’t get the clip to play, but if it is the one where two teams of kids, one in white shirts, and one in black shirts are pass­ing a bas­ket­ball, I got a copy from Heart­Math, and have been using it for years to start my anger man­age­ment groups. Great tool for dis­cus­sion on auto­mat­ic thoughts.

  6. tiara says

    What BEAR!!! OMG I was so hap­py that i got the num­ber of pass­es right.. until the ear ques­tion. How could i miss somthing that fun­ny! i mean c’mon it was right there!

  7. MANDO says

    great clip. a bear what!!! moonwalking!!!!!
    noooooooo
    oo theres is a bear