Monday 19 January 2009

Can you really count? A lesson in perception.

I have recently become very interested in how the brain manages to count when focusing on a moving object such as a bouncing ball. Below is a link to a video that I would like you all to watch. You will see two teams , one team is wearing black and the other white. While you are watching it I want you to count how many passes are made by either team -that is passes made by a white team member to another white team member. Do not count the passes made by a white team member to a black team member.

At the end of the video record the number of passes and respond by posting that number as a ‘comment’ below.
It is important that if you have seen this experiment before, and therefore know the ‘correct’ answer, please do not ruin this experiment by giving away the answer.

The video can be found here:

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/flashmovie/15.php

I will also be placing this on my FORUM.

2 comments:

Karl Le Marcs said...

Tony: Interesting. I've seen this video before but not done the counting myself as I did the same test on another video during part of my Psychology Degree course. I'll not say any more for now, for fear of giving any answers or insight away but I'll watch this video and count what I find here and keep it to one side for later.
Hope everyone gets involved on this, it's quite interesting to see the results (and especially with a subtle Psychological twist that I can employ) :D

Karl Le Marcs said...

FORUM: Perception Test - Can We Count Bounces? [by Tony]