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Subscribe to RSSYou've heard about the elephant in the room, which no one wants to talk about. Now new research describes a gorilla in the room, which not everyone seems to hear.
For the first time, a study has confirmed the existence of "inattentional deafness." This is "when the absence of attention causes people to miss sounds that are otherwise easily detectable," says study author Dr. Polly Dalton, a senior lecturer in cognitive psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.
In this study, appearing online in the journal Cognition, Dalton and co-author Nick Fraenkel asked 45 people aged 16 to 47 to listen to a recording on headphones. Half of the participants were told to pay attention to the two women talking in the recording, while the others were told to tune in to a conversation between two men.
Halfway through the recording, a man's voice is heard repeatedly saying "I'm a gorilla" for 19 seconds.
Participants were later asked if they heard anything unusual. To hear what the audio sounded like, click here.
While 10 percent of the people listening to the men's voices failed to detect the "gorilla," 70 percent of the volunteers listening to the women's voices didn't hear it.
Afterward when researchers explained the study, "most of our participants found it hard to believe that they had missed such an unusual and distinctive sound, particularly given that it lasted for 19 seconds," says Dalton.
The research was modeled after a classic psychology study of "inattentional blindness."
This "invisible gorilla" study found that when people were focused on a visual task -- watching a video and counting the number of basketball passes made by one team -- they failed to notice someone walking across a basketball court dressed in a gorilla suit.
Dalton and Fraenkel monkeyed around with this concept replacing the visible gorilla with an auditory one to see if it would also go undetected.
In a second version of the experiment with 50 different volunteers, the male voice saying "I'm a gorilla" walked closer to the two women talking.
There was even more "inattentional deafness" in this scenario because 35 percent of participants focused on the men's conversation failed to hear the "gorilla" and 55 percent of volunteers concentrating on the women's discussion missed it.
"I think the most surprising aspect of the findings was just how strong the effects of attention could be," points out Dalton. When attention is lacking, it can leave people "deaf" to sounds or "blind" to visual images they would otherwise hear or see.
One real-life example of inattentional deafness is when you're sitting in a restaurant with a friend, and two people are having an interesting conversation at a nearby table. But you've completely missed everything your friend has been saying to you because you've been listening in -- eavesdropping, really -- to the others' talk.
Dalton suspects inattentional deafness happens because the brain is prioritizing the signals when concentrating on one task, but it filters out irrelevant information to avoid being distracted.
But don't go blaming inattentional deafness the next time you hear the words "Please, take out the garbage." That's usually a deliberate failure between your ears known as selective hearing, or only hearing what you want to hear.
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It's almost like suffering from ADOS - Attention Deficit OH!! Shiney!!
Isn't this already obvious? I've known forever that if I'm paying attention to the tv, I miss what my husband is saying, and vice-versa. Can anyone actually pay attention to two conversations at the same time?
Well, I heard it, but only because to me the guy drowned out the women. I don't hear as well at high pitches, so I heard him talking over them better than being able to hear the women during one point, which drew my attention to the men to keep listening to see if he were still there.
The reason the people listening to the two women didn't hear the guy say "i'm a gorilla" is because they fell asleep. Who the heck can pay attention to two women talking about anything?
I guess this explains our political situation. Talking, listening, and comprehending have little to do with one another.
I think a more interesting study would be to see what tones of voices, pitch, and loudness get our attention the most when we are focused and concentrating on something else. It would be the same reasons why sirens, horns, and alarm clock sounds are the way they are because they break through our focus or filtering of background noises. Can our threshold or sensitivity for blocking out background noises be increased or reduced? If you always hear fire or police sirens in your neighborhood, do you get used to them and begin filtering them out when listening to other things?
So much for multi-tasking. I refuse to try to have a conversation with more than one person at a time. If there are others around, I will try to separate the two of us sufficiently to be able to ignore the rest of those in the area. Walking and chewing gum at the same time are sometimes also a challenge.
Why did this article just keep repeating I'm a gorilla? Didn't it have anything else to write about!
Even though the instructions said to listen to the women I barely paid attention to what they were saying because I was listening for the 'gorilla' instead. Rather skewed the result.
The "gorilla" basketball video is another matter. I don't think that people miss seeing the gorilla because they have some sort of "inattentional deafness". The instructions in that case were to count the number of times a ball bounced so naturally one would tune out everything else even a gorilla as noise in order to accurately count the balls. Because counting the bouncing was the task.
The audio instructions are similar: focus on the women. That makes every other noise irrelevant.
Isn't this a positive thing, to tune out, block out, filter, or ignore other than what you are focused on? If it interferes with concentrating on the task such that we cannot completely remember details, then it is a negative. Carried to extreme, isn't the opposite considered a negative social condition: Attention Deficit Disorder? Of those that were asked to pay attention to the women, if they could not remember all the details because they heard the men's voices, I regard that as a failure to concentrate and focus.
Of course they didn't hear it. They were concentrating on listening to the women as they were told to do.
They showed the "basketballs and gorilla" video in my freshman psychology class. I was one of the ones who didn't notice the man in the gorilla suit. Something that big and distracting you would think would be shocking enough to jar your mind from the mundane task of counting basketball passes, but it's really not.
This seems obvious, but it has big implications. It's one of the reasons eyewitness testimony is one of the least reliable forms of evidence in criminal trials. 5 different witnesses will describe 5 totally different scenarios, depending on what they happened to be paying attention to at the time.
I think, like George Constanza, he was just trying to impress the ladies by saying "I'm a guerilla".
FOR THE FIRST TIME? Where has this 'study' been for a thousand years? In a closet? They had to study this to figure it out?