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Evidence record

Why do we miss what is in front of us?

Every sentence on the exploration belongs to at least one claim below. Each says what kind of statement it is, what it rests on, what the evidence does not establish, and how far it was checked. Nothing here is a score, and none of it is a verdict on a belief or a theory.

Last checked 24 September 2026.

  • Source checked: 24
  • A judgement, not a fact: 12
  • Presented as open: 5

If something here is wrong, misquoted, out of date or unfair, write to support@unknownoceans.com and give the claim number, which does not change.

What the question takes for granted

A question in experimental psychology with a well-established core: people engaged in one task regularly fail to report a salient, unexpected event in plain view. What remains argued is what that failure is, a failure to see or a failure to report, and how often it happens outside the laboratory.

  • People often miss salient, unexpected things in plain view while attending to something else

    Established

    Shown in the original video study, in expert radiologists searching their own kind of image, and outdoors with a staged fight. The rate depends heavily on the task and the event.

  • Not reporting something means not having seen it

    Contested

    The classic measure is a yes or no question after the event. Simons and Chabris, and Ward and Scholl, read a failure to report as a failure to perceive; Nartker and colleagues find that non-reporters, as a group, retain some sensitivity to what they deny noticing.

  • A rate measured in a laboratory says how often this happens in ordinary life

    Open

    The rate varies from condition to condition within a single study, and the page says the everyday rate is not known.

How the question is labelled

Claim: The gorilla

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: Not seeing

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

The question

Claim: About half the people counting basketball passes do not notice a person in a gorilla suit walk through the middle of the game.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

One study of 192 observers, almost all undergraduates. The half is pooled across conditions: noticing the gorilla ranged from 8 to 83 per cent depending on the video and the task.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "sustained inattentional blindness replication gorilla" and "inattentional blindness meta-analysis": the effect recurs in later sustained-blindness studies (Ward and Scholl 2015); Nartker and colleagues (eLife 2025) argue that yes or no questioning overstates it. The page now reports that in its uncertain section.

Claim 3 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Noticing depends on attention

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

Noticing here means reporting. Whether attention is needed for seeing, as distinct from reporting, is the argument in claims 30 to 37.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Seeing requires attention” That seeing requires attention is the contested reading the page’s own uncertain section weighs, and Nartker and colleagues (2025) argue against it. What the cited experiments show is that reporting an unexpected event depends on attention.

Claim 4 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: and attention is a limited resource allocated in advance.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s reading of the paradigm: the task is set before the event, and a harder task leaves less for anything else (claim 19).

Claim 5 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: What falls outside it can go unreported entirely, even when people are asked about it directly.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 4, Discussion

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: not one of the eighty-eight nonnoticers ‘remembered’ the Gorilla or Umbrella-Woman events when specifically asked about it, and several did not believe that the event had happened until the videotape was replayed for them.

What this does not establish

Asked directly means asked in words. Forced-choice questions can recover some of what people deny noticing (claim 36).

Later work looked for

Crossref and Europe PMC, 2012 on, "inattentional blindness sensitivity unaware": Nartker and colleagues (2025) find non-reporters retain some sensitivity; the summary was rewritten to allow for it.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “What falls outside it is not dimmed or blurred. It leaves no report at all, and the person is certain nothing was there.” Simons and Chabris report that several non-noticers did not believe the event had happened, not that every one was certain. "Not dimmed or blurred" took the side the page leaves open, and Nartker and colleagues (2025) report degraded rather than absent sensitivity in people who deny noticing.

Claim 6 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Whether it also went unseen, or was seen faintly and never reported, is still argued.

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

Two recent positions, set out in claims 35 to 37: a failure of perception, and a perception degraded rather than abolished.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “” Added so the summary states the open question the page’s uncertain section describes, now with the 2025 evidence.

Claim 7 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Vision feels like a window. You open your eyes and the room is there, complete, without effort.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

A description of how seeing feels, which Simons and Chabris open their paper with.

Claim 8 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The window is a reconstruction, and what was not asked for often does not make it in.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s own reading of claims 3 and 6. "Often" because about half of observers do notice.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “The window is a reconstruction, and the reconstruction only includes what was asked for.” In the study the page describes, 54 per cent of observers noticed the unexpected event, so "only includes what was asked for" overstated it.

Claim 9 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

What happens

Claim: What happens

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

The experiment everyone has heard of and few have read

Claim: The experiment everyone has heard of and few have read

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

A heading. It introduces the difference, set out below, between the famous chest-thumping clip and the study most of the numbers come from.

Claim: Participants watched a video of two teams passing basketballs and counted the passes made by one team.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 2.3, Procedures

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: they should keep either a silent mental count of the total number of passes made by the attended team (the Easy condition) or separate silent mental counts of the number of bounce passes and aerial passes made by the attended team (the Hard condition).

Later work looked for

How the experiment was run; not a finding later work revises.

Claim 12 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Partway through, a person in a gorilla suit walked through the game from one side to the other while the players carried on around them, on screen for five seconds.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 2.2, Materials

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: walked from off camera on one side of the action to the other ... a shorter woman wearing a gorilla costume ... walked through the action in the same way ... the unexpected event lasted 5 s, and the players continued their actions during and after the event.

Later work looked for

How the experiment was run; not a finding later work revises.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “walked through the middle of the frame while the game carried on around them” The paper describes the gorilla walking through the action from one side to the other; stopping in the middle belongs to the extra condition in claim 17.

Claim 13 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Half of the 192 people tested saw a woman with an umbrella in place of the gorilla.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssections 2.2 and 3

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: videos were created with the following four display types: Transparent/Umbrella Woman, Transparent/Gorilla, Opaque/Umbrella Woman, and Opaque/Gorilla ... The remaining 192 observers were distributed equally across the sixteen conditions

Later work looked for

How the experiment was run; not a finding later work revises.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Of the 192 people tested, 46 per cent did not report seeing anything unusual.” The 46 per cent pools the gorilla with the umbrella-woman conditions, which the page did not mention, so it read as the rate for the gorilla. The gorilla was noticed by 44 per cent.

Claim 14 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Across both, 46 per cent did not report the unexpected event; for the gorilla alone, 56 per cent did not.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 3, Results

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: Out of all 192 observers across all conditions, 54% noticed the unexpected event and 46% failed to notice the unexpected event ... The Umbrella Woman was noticed more often than the Gorilla overall (65% versus 44%;

What this does not establish

The 56 per cent is 100 minus the 44 per cent the paper reports for the gorilla. Both figures pool transparent and opaque videos and easy and hard tasks.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "sustained inattentional blindness" and "inattentional blindness meta-analysis": nothing that revises these figures for this study; Nartker and colleagues (2025) question the yes or no measure behind them (claim 36).

Claim 15 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Shown the video a second time they were consistently surprised, and some said “I missed that?!”

Kind
Quotes a source. The words of a named text, checked against the source.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

The paper reports this as an observation, without counts.

Claim 16 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The version in which the gorilla stops in the middle of the players, turns to the camera and thumps its chest is an extra condition, reported in the paper’s discussion.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 4, Discussion, point (i)

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: we tested a longer and more salient unexpected event in an additional condition not reported above ... the Gorilla walked from right to left into the live basketball-passing event, stopped in the middle of the players as the action continued all around it, turned to face the camera, thumped its chest

Later work looked for

How the experiment was run; not a finding later work revises.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “The version everyone has seen, in which the gorilla stops in the middle, turns to the camera and thumps its chest, is an extra condition at the end of the paper.” No source read says which version most people have seen, and the condition sits in the Discussion rather than at the end of the paper.

Claim 17 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: It lasted nine seconds and was shown to twelve people. Six of them noticed.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 4, Discussion, point (i)

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: this action began after 35 s and lasted 9 s in a stimulus tape 62 s long ... Twelve new observers (6) watched this video while attending to the White team and engaging in the Easy monitoring task; only 50% noticed the event.

What this does not establish

Twelve observers, one task (the easy count, attending the white team). The authors note it is roughly the rate for the ordinary walking gorilla under the same conditions, 42 per cent.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "sustained inattentional blindness gorilla": no later report of this condition found.

Claim 18 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The effect is stronger when the counting task is harder, and when the unexpected object is less like what is being attended to.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

The authors say their design cannot rule out that dissimilarity to the ignored team, rather than similarity to the attended one, is what matters.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "inattentional blindness similarity attended ignored": a 2023 preprint (Ding and others) tests both; not read, and nothing found that reverses the direction reported here.

Claim 19 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Watching the team in black, 58 per cent noticed the black gorilla. Watching the team in white, 27 per cent did.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 3, Results

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: when observers attended to the actions of the Black team, they noticed the Gorilla much more often than when they attended to the actions of the White team (Black 58%, White 27%;

What this does not establish

48 observers in each group.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "sustained inattentional blindness replication": nothing that revises these figures.

Claim 20 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

The failure is not in the eye

Claim: The failure is not in the eye

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Follows from the eye-tracking result in claim 23, and from the authors’ conclusion that an object can cross the fovea unseen.

Claim 21 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Twenty-four radiologists searching lung scans for nodules were given a last case with a gorilla in it, more than forty-eight times the size of the average nodule they were hunting.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    The invisible gorilla strikes again: sustained inattentional blindness in expert observersDesign and Procedure

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: In Experiment 1, 24 radiologists ... had up to three minutes to freely scroll through each of 5 lung CTs, searching for nodules ... On the final trial, we inserted a gorilla ... Thus, the gorilla was over 48 times the size of the average nodule in the images

What this does not establish

The comparison is of volume: a box holding the gorilla would be over 7,400 cubic millimetres, and the average nodule was 153.

Later work looked for

How the experiment was run; not a finding later work revises.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “forty-eight times the size of the nodules they were hunting” The paper compares the gorilla with the average nodule, and says over 48 times.

Claim 22 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Twenty did not report it, and eye tracking showed that most of those who missed it had looked directly at where it was.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    The invisible gorilla strikes again: sustained inattentional blindness in expert observersResults, Experiment 1

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: Twenty of 24 radiologists failed to report seeing a gorilla ... eye-tracking revealed that, of the 20 radiologists who did not report the gorilla, 12 looked directly at the gorilla’s location when it was visible.

What this does not establish

Twenty-four radiologists; twelve of the twenty who missed it looked at it. All of them reported seeing it when shown the image afterwards.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2014 on, "inattentional blindness radiologists gorilla" and "expertise inattentional blindness meta-analysis": later studies in medical imaging and a 2022 meta-analysis on expertise (Ekelund and others) were found but not read; nothing found that revises this result.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Twenty did not see it” The paper measures failure to report. Whether the radiologists saw it is the question the page leaves open.

Claim 23 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: For most of them the eyes did their part.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Follows from claim 23: twelve of the twenty who missed it looked straight at it.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “The eyes did their part.” Eight of the twenty who missed the gorilla did not look at it.

Claim 24 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: What did not happen is whatever turns that input into something a person can report. So the missing part is not absent from the input. It is absent from the report.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s reading of claims 21 to 23, kept to what the measure shows: a failure of report.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “It is absent from the experience, which is a different and more unsettling claim.” The page’s next section says report and experience cannot be told apart, and Nartker and colleagues (2025) find some sensitivity in people who deny noticing. The paragraph asserted the side the page leaves open.

Claim 25 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Whether it is also absent from the experience is a harder question, and a more unsettling one.

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

Taken up in the next section, claims 30 to 37.

Claim 26 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

What kind of failure it is

Claim: What kind of failure it is

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: You cannot notice the things you did not notice, which is why this needs an experiment rather than a memory.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s reason for relying on experiments: a missed event leaves nothing for the person to recall.

Claim 28 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Whether it was seen and not remembered

Claim: Whether it was seen and not remembered

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

A heading naming the question claims 30 to 37 set out.

Claim 29 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: An alternative account is that the gorilla was experienced briefly and then not encoded, which would make this a memory failure rather than a perceptual one.

Kind
Hypothesis. A proposed explanation, not an established one.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 4, Discussion

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026

    The source reads: One alternative interpretation of our findings is that subjects did consciously perceive the unexpected object, however briefly, but immediately forgot they had seen it (Wolfe 1999).

Other readings

Simons and Chabris, and Ward and Scholl, favour a failure of perception (claims 32 and 35). Nartker and colleagues say their results are consistent with some memory failure but that it cannot be the whole story.

Claim 30 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The two are hard to separate, because the only access anyone has to what a participant experienced is a report made afterwards.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

Claim 31 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The authors think blindness the more parsimonious reading: someone who had seen the gorilla and forgotten would not be shocked to be shown it.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Eventssection 4, Discussion

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026

    The source reads: if observers did consciously perceive and then forget the gorilla, they presumably would not be particularly surprised when asked if there had been a gorilla in the display ... It seems more parsimonious to assume that observers were never aware of the unexpected object

Claim 32 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: This is the same measurement problem that runs through the study of consciousness.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s link to its other questions about consciousness: what a person experienced is known only through what they report.

  • Context

    Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindnessAbstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026

    The source reads: IB carries tremendous significance, both as evidence that awareness requires attention and as a tool in seeking the neural correlates of consciousness. However, such implications rest on a notoriously biased measure

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “runs through every question about consciousness” "Every question" was wider than anything the page shows.

Claim 33 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Later work has pushed from both sides.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Introduces claims 35 to 37, which point in different directions.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “” The currency search found work on both sides of the passage’s question since 1999, including the largest set of these experiments yet run, which the page did not mention.

Claim 34 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Ward and Scholl had people report anything unexpected the moment they saw it, and some still missed a salient event that broke the pattern they had come to expect, which the authors take as a failure of perception rather than of memory.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Inattentional blindness reflects limitations on perception, not memory: Evidence from repeated failures of awarenessAbstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: observers fail to report seeing salient events’ not only when they have no expectation, but also when they have the wrong expectations about the events nature. This occurs when observers must immediately report seeing anything unexpected, even mid-event.

  • Supports

    Inattentional blindness reflects limitations on perception, not memory: Evidence from repeated failures of awarenessExperiment 2, Method and Results

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: observers pressed a key any time throughout the rest of the experiment when they saw something different or unexpected ... of these 100 nonnoticers, 13 subsequently missed the final unexpected event when it had unexpected features

    The 13 are of the 100 observers who had already missed the first unexpected event; in a control group 4 of 100 missed an event that matched what they had seen.

What this does not establish

Shapes moving on a screen, not a scene. The rate was modest: 13 of the 100 observers who had already missed the first event, against 4 of 100 in the control group. Whether a missed event was never perceived is the authors’ reading of the result.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "inattentional blindness perception not memory": Nartker and colleagues (2025) cite it and argue a graded view (claim 37).

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Ward and Scholl had people report anything unexpected the moment they saw it, and they still missed salient events, which the authors take as a failure of perception rather than of memory.” Read in full, the paper reports that 13 of 100 observers who had already missed one event missed a later one that broke their expectation, against 4 of 100 in a control group. "They still missed" read as though people generally did.

Claim 35 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: In 2025 five experiments with more than 25,000 online participants found that, taken as a group, people who said they had noticed nothing could still report the colour, shape or location of what they missed better than chance, and leaned towards saying no.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindnessDiscussion, first paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: Across five pre-registered experiments totaling over 25,000 subjects, we found that groups of observers could successfully report a variety of features of unattended stimuli, even when they all individually claimed not to have noticed those stimuli.

  • Supports

    Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindnessAbstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: By introducing absent trials, we further show that observers are collectively biased to report not noticing in IB

What this does not establish

A result for the group, not for any one person. The margin is small: in the largest experiment non-noticers chose the right colour or shape about 52 to 55 per cent of the time, against 50 by chance, and in the two sustained tasks location was not reported above chance. The stimuli were lines and shapes on a screen, not a gorilla in a video. The authors allow that the sensitivity could be unconscious.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2025 on, "sensitivity to visual features inattentional blindness": only the eLife reviews and assessment of this paper.

Claim 36 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Their authors read this as seeing that inattention degrades rather than abolishes.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindnessDiscussion

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026

    The source reads: Our data suggest the need to move beyond such binaries (cf. Cohen et al., 2023): Inattention degrades but does not eliminate perception and awareness – and likewise explicit encoding.

Other readings

The authors acknowledge that the above-chance performance could reflect unconscious processing, as in blindsight.

Claim 37 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

How much of ordinary life this describes

Claim: How much of ordinary life this describes

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

A heading naming the question the passage leaves open.

Claim 38 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The laboratory version uses a demanding task and a brief event.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

A description of the paradigm in claims 12 and 13.

Claim 39 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Driving, reading and conversation are also demanding tasks

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s comparison. Chabris and colleagues call the evidence from driving anecdotal.

Claim 40 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: and the effect has been demonstrated with real objects in real settings.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

Two studies are named here; the clown study is reported by Chabris and colleagues and was not read.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2012 on, "inattentional blindness real world": later field and applied studies exist (eyewitness settings, Hyman 2018 and Wulff 2021, not read); nothing that changes the claim.

Claim 41 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: One study staged it outdoors. Participants ran after a confederate along a 400 metre route, counting how many times he touched his head, and passed a driveway eight metres off the path where three men were staging a fight.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

Later work looked for

How the experiment was run; not a finding later work revises.

Claim 42 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: At night seven of twenty noticed it. In daylight nine of sixteen did.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

Small samples of college students who knew they were in a study.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2012 on, "inattentional blindness simulated assault fight": nothing that revises these figures.

Claim 43 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The study was built around a court case in which a Boston police officer was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for saying he had not seen an assault he ran past. He later won an appeal and was not tried again.

Kind
Historical claim. A statement about the past that historical evidence can test.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

The case is told as Chabris and colleagues tell it, from a 2009 book (Lehr) that was not read. They say no study can show why Conley did not see the assault.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “” The same paper reports that the conviction did not stand; leaving it out made the case end at the conviction.

Claim 44 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: What is not known is the rate.

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

Every rate on the page belongs to a particular task and event; none measures everyday life.

Claim 45 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Nobody can count the things they did not notice, which is a limit on the question rather than on the answer.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s own reasoning, restating the interlude.

Claim 46 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

What was read