

The Invisible Gorilla Strikes Again [pdf] - r0h1n
http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~houdek3/papers/Drew%20et%20al%202013.pdf

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r0h1n
> 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.

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a_bonobo
I find this study to be slightly unfair - if you're a trained expert in
detecting tumors, then your eyes are looking for undefined shadows and tumor-
like growth, not for gorillas. If looking for gorillas was their training then
they'd spot it in a heartbeat.

In the end, what is this trying to say? The paper says that the experts were
better at detecting lung growths than the novices (thankfully), so all is
well?

Edit: Looking at the pictures, it's clear that they shortly hovered over the
gorilla. Maybe there's a "The Emperor's New Clothes" effect here at work? No-
one wanted to report the gorilla in fear of being made fun of?

~~~
CrLf
The experts may be looking for tumors and not gorillas, but what if it wasn't
a gorilla but also not a tumor?

Imagine a doctor performing an ultrasound on a pregnant woman... A tumor may
very well go unnoticed even if the doctor looks directly at it, just because
he isn't looking for tumors.

~~~
Pitarou
It happens all the time. I'm sure we can all think of a few "the doctors
should have noticed it" anecdotes that happened in exactly that way.

