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Multicenter Study
. 2013 Sep;24(9):1848-53.
doi: 10.1177/0956797613479386. Epub 2013 Jul 17.

The invisible gorilla strikes again: sustained inattentional blindness in expert observers

Trafton Drew  1 , Melissa L-H Võ, Jeremy M Wolfe
Affiliations
Multicenter Study

The invisible gorilla strikes again: sustained inattentional blindness in expert observers

Trafton Drew et al. Psychol Sci. 2013 Sep.

Abstract

Researchers have shown that people often miss the occurrence of an unexpected yet salient event if they are engaged in a different task, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. However, demonstrations of inattentional blindness have typically involved naive observers engaged in an unfamiliar task. What about expert searchers who have spent years honing their ability to detect small abnormalities in specific types of images? We asked 24 radiologists to perform a familiar lung-nodule detection task. A gorilla, 48 times the size of the average nodule, was inserted in the last case that was presented. Eighty-three percent of the radiologists did not see the gorilla. Eye tracking revealed that the majority of those who missed the gorilla looked directly at its location. Thus, even expert searchers, operating in their domain of expertise, are vulnerable to inattentional blindness.

Keywords: perception; selective attention; visual attention.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Gorilla opacity increased from 50 to 100%, then back down to 50% over the course of 5 frames within the chest CT scan.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A: Chest CT Image containing the embedded gorilla. B: Eye-position plot of one radiologist who did not report seeing the gorilla. Each circle represents eye-position for 1ms.
Figure 3
Figure 3
A: Inattentional Blindness rate in Experiments 1 and 2. This represents the percentage of observers who did not report seeing the gorilla. B: Percentage of nodules that were correctly marked by the observers in Experiments 1 and 2. Error bars here and in Figure 3C represent standard error of the mean. C: Gorilla detection rate for Experiment 3 as a function of presentation rate (fast 35 ms/frame or slow 70 ms/frame).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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