> 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.
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?
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.
