Large changes to a scene go unnoticed when they coincide with a visual interruption.
Simons and Levin's 1998 experiment: an experimenter asking directions was swapped for a different person behind a passing door, and roughly half the subjects did not notice. Eyewitness identification rests on an assumption this undermines.
In practice
- A colleague returns from three weeks' leave with a beard and nobody mentions it until the fourth day.
- A website changes its navigation overnight and a third of users cannot say afterwards what was different, only that something is wrong.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind