TEST YOUR PERCEPTION - TRY A CLASSIC FLICKER EXPERIMENT
CHANGE BLINDNESS
TAKE THE TEST
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DID YOU SPOT THE DIFFERENCE?
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What is going on?
Once you've seen the difference, you can't NOT see it, even if you
go back to the first animation. Why is it so much harder to see the
change in the first animation? The short answer is that your brain was on auto pilot. Our
brains are wired to notice motion. Motion signals a change. But when
something interrupts the motion signals, like the gray frame between the
images in the animation, it blinds us to the change. Why? No one knows
for sure, but it might be because our visual memory is very short. The
gray frame swamps it and more or less wipes out whatever we saw a
fraction of a second earlier. To see the changes in the first animation,
you have to switch from auto pilot to actively hunting with your
attention. Even then, unless you happen to be looking at exactly the
spot where the image changes, you’re blind to the change. When the gray
frame isn’t there to swamp our perception, the difference is easy to
spot.
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WARNING:
If you have photosensitive epilepsy, or think you might, do not attempt these flicker experiments.
They are not flickering at a rate known to induce seizures, but your results may vary.
If you have photosensitive epilepsy, or think you might, do not attempt these flicker experiments.
They are not flickering at a rate known to induce seizures, but your results may vary.