Missing the obvious (1 Viewer)

There was a really interesting program on BBC4 on Wednesday. It was called "Blink: a Horizon Guide to Senses". It was basically looking back at archive footage from Horizon to see how science has worked out how we use our senses.

One clip which I found particularly interesting was an experiment to show how easily we can miss things and what an important part our brains play in our vision. An audience was asked to watch a video of three basketballl players dressed in yellow kit throwing a ball to each other. The audience were asked to count how many times the ball was thrown. To make it a bit more difficult, there were also three basketball players in a blue kit throwing a second ball, but the audience was told to ignore them.

After the clip had been played, the audience were asked how many of them noticed anything unusual. Five out of about 40 people said that they had noticed something unusual, but the rest hadn't. They were then told to watch the clip again, but this time don't count. Amazingly, while the players were throwing the ball, a person in a gorilla outfit walked in front of the players, looked at the camera and beat his chest before walking off. Most of the audience (and myself watching at home) had completely missed the gorilla. I was so flabergasted that I rewound the program to watch the original again, and sure enough, there was the gorilla.

Apparently our brains were so busy counting the throws and the gorilla was so unexpected, that it didn't register and we didn't see it.

It got me wondering if this could be applied to birding. I have a very logical and statistical mind, and my immediate reaction on seeing a flock of birds, especially if they are uncommon, is to count them, and then I count them again to see how many males and females there are. Is it possible that I could miss the birding equivelent of the gorilla walking in front? Could this partly explain why some people are apparently very good at finding rarities, whilst others are not? How else might it affect what we see?

By the way, once you knew to expect the gorilla, the trick didn't work anymore. I watched it again, and even though I was counting I saw the gorilla.

I've seen this out in the woods when a person has 'lost' a knife. Blaze orange handle, yet to the person running round utterly focused on the ground it was practically invisible. I watched amazed as they missed it on a log six inches from their foot because they were so tightly focused the bigger picture was ignored.
Like the gorilla, an unfocused set of eyes with no specific target sees far more than a set of eyes with a mission. Woods for the trees type scenario.

It's also related to adjusting to a different visual environment. When out in the Belizean forests at Lamanai with a local guide, I found it very difficult to pick up the species he called, but after a while I began to get the hang of things, but nowhere near to his standard!

When a distant bird comes into sight, verbal instructions to others need to be not only accurate, but also on their wavelength. Telling me that 'it's over there' or 'near that tree' is less then helpful. However, telling them that 'it's approaching the church tower' all too often produces the response 'where's the tower?', rather emphasising the 'unseen gorilla' aspect!

When scanning for birds across a wide vista, I try to relate landscape features to the clock, 12 o'clock being dead ahead, 3 o'clock being 90 degrees to the right, and so on. However, even when this is explained at length, some people can't relate to it, which is another kind of perception limitation.

Even stranger is that a small proportion of people just don't get 'pointing'. A very good birding friend of mine seldom looks in the direction indicated to him, and so has missed many good birds over the decades; he really thinks he is looking in the same direction, but his attempts can be up to 45 degreees out!

The reverse phenomenon occurs with people who have seen a bird, turn round to tell you, then point steadily in a direction well away from the bird, even when they are looking again at the bird!
MJB

Interesting thread. The gorilla video is really surprising isn't it? I read the book "the invisible gorilla" to find out more. You often don't "see" things unless you are consciously looking for them.

As often happens here, yesterday there were 30 or 40 Black & Turkey Vultures circling overhead near my apartment. That morning in the shower, I'd been thinking about the Zone-tailed Hawk I'd seen here a couple of months before. As soon as I saw the vultures, I picked out the hawk in the sky because I'd been thinking about it earlier. If not, I'm sure I wouldn't have seen it.

As I often ignore the vultures, no doubt I miss the odd raptor that's with them.
I guess that is where experience counts - if you know which rarer birds hang around within larger flocks of common ones, you'll start looking for them.

interesting thread. I've found that whenever I've been fortunate enough to revisit a site somewhere years after my first visit, armed with modern gen of what's supposed to be there, I sometimes find some things to be not uncommon when actually looking for them, even though I missed them altogether first time round. But the flip side is that if I've got a big list in my head of certain species to look for at a site, I'm bound to overlook things I might otherwise have noticed, if eg, I feel there's limited time so no point in bothering checking all the hirundines etc. Funny old game.

There may be some obvious (in hindsight) calls/songs to overlook for sure.

As someone who only got into watching birds in recent years I've had a lot of experience of this and it's something I've always said to friends who wonder when we go walking how I manage to find birds they didn't even know were there (even though compared to pretty much all the other birdwatchers I know I'm awful at finding birds!). Your brain is excellent at throwing away things it doesn't think are important and you have to train it to flag up the things you want to see/hear. It's why I used to walk across the meadow near my home and think it was completely devoid of any kind of wildlife but now realise it's brimming with life.

It's quite a well-known study and goes to prove how much of our "vision" is actually down to our brain rather than what our eyes see. There's a condition called blindsight in which people say they cannot see an object, but they can reach out and grasp the object proving that they can see it but that the perception of it isn't reaching their consciousness.