What if you knew that an unexpected event was likely to occur? A new study finds that those who have this kind of information are no better than others (they may be even worse) at noticing other unexpected events.
The study used a new video based on one used in a now-famous experiment conducted in the late 1990s by Daniel Simons, University of Illinois psychology professor and his collaborator, Christopher Chabris, now a psychology professor at Union College in New York. In the original video, two groups of people--some dressed in white, some in black--are passing basketballs back and forth. The study subjects were asked to count the passes among those dressed in white while ignoring the passes of those in black.
