Basketball Awareness Test
The test that started it all: count the passes, and find out what a whole team of researchers proved you'd miss.
History
This is the closest version to the original 1999 study by psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, later documented in their 2010 book "The Invisible Gorilla". It remains one of the most replicated demonstrations of inattentional blindness in psychology, and the version most people mean when they say "the gorilla test".
The setup
Two teams — usually one in white, one in black — pass basketballs between their own members. You're told, before the clip starts, to silently count the number of passes made by one team. Partway through, an unexpected figure walks directly through the middle of the action.
What it helps you notice
It demonstrates that even a large, unmistakable event can go completely unnoticed when attention is narrowly directed elsewhere — not a failure of eyesight, but a limit of attention itself. Questions it tends to raise:
- What was your pass count, and how sure are you of it?
- Did you see the unexpected figure at all on your first watch?
- What does that say about what else you might be missing in daily life?