Did You Spot the Gorilla? A Mind-Bending Optical Illusion Experiment

[DaveC426913]

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html"
View this video. (Requires Java.) Feel free to view it as many times as necessary.
Then answer the poll question.

I will wait a day or two, then post the result.

 

[cronxeh]

11 or 12 depending on how you define a 'pass', but I am pretty sure this was looped pretty hard too.

 

[moose]

I saw 15 or 16... Sometimes when they pass each other it's nearly impossible to tell if they threw it back and forth to one another or not.

 

[mattmns]

I saw 15 too, I have no clue how cronxeh is getting 11 or 12, but I also don't see how this is an optical illusion, so maybe that 11 or 12 is part of it.

 

[Moonbear]

I counted 14, but it was a little hard to tell sometimes when other people were blocking the view. What's with the person in the gorilla suit showing up in the middle? Is that supposed to distract us from counting?

 

[mattmns]

Yeah I don't know what is up with the gorilla either

I remember the first time I counted I did not even notice the gorilla go by, maybe that was the illusion?

 

[moose]

I didn't see a gorilla O.O

 

[mattmns]

Yeah the gorilla must be the illusion.

 

[moose]

Yeah the gorilla must be the illusion.

I just watched it again, BWAHAHAHAHAHA How could I not see that before?

 

[Moonbear]

Oh, I missed a pass the first time I watched...there was a really quick one in there. I revise my answer to 15.

Yeah, I'm not sure if the gorilla is the illusion that you are supposed to miss seeing the gorilla while intensely counting, or if the illusion is that the gorilla is supposed to distract you from counting so you miss counting some passes.

 

[moose]

Oh, I missed a pass the first time I watched...there was a really quick one in there. I revise my answer to 15.

Yeah, I'm not sure if the gorilla is the illusion that you are supposed to miss seeing the gorilla while intensely counting, or if the illusion is that the gorilla is supposed to distract you from counting so you miss counting some passes.

The illusion is trying to figure out the illusion

 

[mattmns]

I think there is a deeper social meaning here. We, as humans, just sit around and do stupid things like counting how many times a team passes a ball, while gorillas are out there slowly taking over the world! We must stop these gorillas now!

 

[matthyaouw]

I've seen a verion of this before in which a load of people wandered around in circles passing a breifcase, and half way through someone in a bee costume came to join them. I completely missed it then, but since this time I expected it, it was impossible to not see it.

 

[cronxeh]

WHITE team not both teams - watch carefully, there are 11 passes

 

[big man]

Nah come on, how the hell did you get 11? Can there be that few?

I'd have to go for the 14 there for sure.

I'd bet my left nut that it's 14

 

[Moonbear]

WHITE team not both teams - watch carefully, there are 11 passes

I definitely counted 15 from the white team. I was worried I might miss some being passed by the black team to someone on the white team since I was focusing on the white team, but as far as I can tell, the black team never passes to the white team.

 

[mattmns]

WHITE team not both teams - watch carefully, there are 11 passes

WHAT?!?? Please define pass. In my opinion any time the ball goes from one person to another, that is a pass. Meaning that those bounce passes are passes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball#Passing

 

[cronxeh]

Ok rewatching there are 14 passes

 

[cronxeh]

I'd bet my left nut that it's 14

Ouch... the man's a gambler

And yea, that gorilla is just tripping me out

 

[Smasherman]

I counted 14, also. The first time through I noticed the gorrilla just as it looked toward the camera. Tripped me out because I thought someone turned into it (hence the illusion).

 

[gravenewworld]

no there is at least 16 passes. one part of the movie you have to watch very carefully, there are 3 very rapid passes where one of the white team's players almost blocks the pass from being seen with his body.

 

[Monique]

it's not about the passes, it's about missing the gorilla

 

[Chi Meson]

'sfunny: I was expecting to see another screaming ghoul trick, consequently all I saw was the gorilla, and I wondered what the whole point was.

 

[Pengwuino]

hahahaha how could i have missed that gorilla? I watched it twice and didn't see it but the third time i wasl ike " wait a second, what the hell is that gorilla doing there!" I countd 14 though

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Fantastic!

I rarely get sucked in by this sort of thing anymore but this one got me.

 

[DaveC426913]

Drat. You guys are excellent observers. It's not about the passing. It's about what you DIDN'T see. But most of you did.

When I tried this on my family, they were *convinced* that I had pulled a bait & switch on them, showing them a different video.

I would have liked to noit give away the secret, for the sake of future hopefuls, but too many of you have spilled the beans.

 

[mattmns]

So how many passes were there?

Is it a coincedence that the video is named "Video 15" ?

 

[Mk]

Too bad it ruins it for people that know what's going on already. Moonbear, did you see it before or read of the experiment.

I saw it on the Discovery channel, and was like AHHH! HOw'd I miss it! But the 25 other people all missed it so I didn't feel bad.

 

[Moonbear]

Too bad it ruins it for people that know what's going on already. Moonbear, did you see it before or read of the experiment.

I saw it on the Discovery channel, and was like AHHH! HOw'd I miss it! But the 25 other people all missed it so I didn't feel bad.

Nope, never saw this one before. I saw the gorilla the first time I watched and thought the trick was that the gorilla was supposed to distract me from counting passes , so watched again to count while trying to ignore the gorilla (it's really difficult to do once you know it's there).

 

[cronxeh]

Nope, never saw this one before. I saw the gorilla the first time I watched and thought the trick was that the gorilla was supposed to distract me from counting passes , so watched again to count while trying to ignore the gorilla (it's really difficult to do once you know it's there).

When the gorilla appeared I wasnt sure if he was white or on a white team - so I started thinking about the question, and it turns out they were all white, so then I thought what makes them white - their ethnicity or their t-shirts? See you "assume" they are white because they have white t-shirts, but you don't know! It could be 17 passes, or 14 depending on how you count, and the gorilla is just an eye candy - I was hoping it was a hot chick who would take the costume off to reveal the skimpy bikini underneath

dissa--ppoint-edd

 

[Smurf]

I counted 14 but I'm pretty sure I missed at least 1 so I put 15. It might've been 16.

 

[hypnagogue]

This is a demonstration of a cognitive phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. I wouldn't call it an optical illusion, because it really has nothing to do with optics per se, but rather high-level cognitive (attentional) processing of visual stimuli. Many people don't see the gorilla because their attentional resources are devoted to the given task, to the exclusion of other visual events. It may even be that for this particular task, conscious representations of black figures (and thus the gorilla) are actively inhibited.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This is a demonstration of a cognitive phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. I wouldn't call it an optical illusion, because it really has nothing to do with optics per se, but rather high-level cognitive (attentional) processing of visual stimuli. Many people don't see the gorilla because their attentional resources are devoted to the given task, to the exclusion of other visual events. It may even be that for this particular task, conscious representations of black figures (and thus the gorilla) are actively inhibited.

I used to play with this while at Dodger and Rams [then the LA Rams] games. Look for red in the crowd and the red jumps right out. Look for blue and you see the blue but not the red, etc.

 

[Smurf]

This is a demonstration of a cognitive phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. I wouldn't call it an optical illusion, because it really has nothing to do with optics per se, but rather high-level cognitive (attentional) processing of visual stimuli. Many people don't see the gorilla because their attentional resources are devoted to the given task, to the exclusion of other visual events. It may even be that for this particular task, conscious representations of black figures (and thus the gorilla) are actively inhibited.

That's pretty cool. I actually saw the guerrila, but completely ignored it (and thus, didn't register it as a guerilla at the time, but now that it's been mentioned i remember)

 

[cepheid]

I actually saw the guerrila.

WHOAH! What video were *you* watching?