Change Blindness; you cannot be aware of everything.

[MA-Caver]

This is a fascinating video of a study conducted to test whether people are more aware of changes or not in their environment. The results of a simple experiment are surprising.

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This is a similar video with random folks being chosen... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg&feature=fvw
As Martial Artist it behooves us to try and take note of everything around us. Part of our awareness training. Yet we are everyday ordinary people and thus are not practicing this as often. LEO's are referred to as "trained observers" they're supposed to notice everything (in a manner of speaking) but again they're just as human as the rest of us.
Wonders if this knowledge will change how we go through our daily lives and if we will heighten our awareness level to the subtle changes in our environment?

Thoughts/comments?

 

[jks9199]

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But the difference in a trained observer and an "ordinary" observer isn't really that the trained observer sees more; it's that they recognize the significance of what they do see. For example, you can probably read the ground and tell me that a cave is likely to be nearby, right? If you're in a cave, you probably often have a good idea what you're going to run into as you notice dripping stalactites or the texture of the rock, right? Me? I'm guessing as to what's significant. But if you and I walk down the same street, I'm going to notice a number of things that meant nothing to you, and so were discarded from your awareness. A few years ago, I was having lunch with my brother in a local mall. I looked up, and commented that a kid walking by us had weed. Why? How many 14 or 15 year olds do you know who smoke hand rolled cigarettes, which this kid was carrying? My brother noticed the cigarette -- but didn't know that it meant anything until I told him.

Being a trained observer is also about knowing how to observe. A simple example: the Secret Service and others that do protective work in crowds learn not to watch the show -- they watch the crowd. They look for things that don't fit, like someone looking the wrong way or whose attention isn't where you would expect it to be. Or a doctor/nurse/EMT and other medical professionals learn to look for certain signs and symptoms in people, and they learn how to see those changes.

 

[girlbug2]

I wish I could have taken part in that experiment; I wonder if I would have fallen into the 75 percent that didn't notice, or the 25 percent that noticed the change. I am definitely not a trained observer.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I have been fortunate enough to have been trained as an observer, and to be color-blind. Color-blindness can be a great advantage. We do not pay as much attention to the colors we see, because we know that colors lie (at least to us). We do pay attention to shape, light & shadow, texture, and movement. I will walk right by a rose bush if the roses are the right color red, because they look like the green leaves to me, so I just think it's a 'bush'. On the other hand, camouflage tends not to fool me. I do not know whether or not the experiment in question would have caught me out. I did notice once when my boss changed his tie while he was out at lunch, though. No one else did.

 

[Ken Morgan]

A cool little video.

I wonder the % of male/females who seen the change? They only showed the three females. I wonder if it has to do with the attractivness of teh subject?

If the clerks were two differnet females, would the males have noticed?

Its funny at work/school i always notice when one of teh females has done something different to her hair. Generally I'm the only one, sometimes it simply a new tint. I think i trained myself a long time ago to recoginise this because I know wives/GF like when you notice...