A recent study found that radiologists would often fail to notice an image of a gorilla in x-rays they were asked to analyze. This demonstrates the phenomenon known as

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

At the core of this question is the idea that people can miss a salient event when their attention is engaged elsewhere. This sets the stage for evaluating each choice.
Option 1: 'inattentional blindness.' This option describes the exact phenomenon where an unexpected object (like a gorilla) goes unnoticed because attention is focused on a demanding task (reading X-ray images). The key feature is that the person is not blind to the stimulus in general; instead, attention is selectively allocated, causing a failure to perceive something obvious. This fits the described study.
Option 2: 'effortful encoding.' Encoding relates to how information is taken in and stored in memory. When encoding is effortful, performance improves with deliberate, attentive processing, but the gorilla example is about failure to notice during perception, not about memory encoding or how well something is encoded after perception. So this does not capture the described effect.
Option 3: 'stimulus discrimination.' This term refers to the ability to distinguish between different stimuli (tell one thing from another). The gorilla scenario is not about distinguishing similar stimuli; it’s about missing a stimulus altogether due to limited attention, which is a different cognitive bottleneck. Therefore, this is not the right explanation for the observed lapse.
Option 4: 'bottom-up processing.' Bottom-up processing is data-driven perception guided by sensory input, starting with stimuli features and building up to recognition. The gorilla miss in this context is better explained by a top-down attentional bottleneck rather than a failure of processing basic sensory features, which would be more aligned with bottom-up accounts. Hence, this option does not describe the phenomenon at hand.

PSYC1101.40653.202540 Exam 2- Requires Respondus LockDown Browser

A recent study found that radiologists would often fail to notice an image of a gorilla in x-rays they were asked to analyze. This demonstrates the phenomenon known as

View Explanation

Log in for full answers

Similar Questions

Question at position 7 ________ refers to the failure of a person to detect unexpected events when he or she is focused on another task.Parallel processingSubliminal perceptionInattentional blindnessTop-down processing

What does the Invisible Gorilla experiment illustrate?

Which of the following illustrates how we can miss things even if they are clearly visible?

Failure to see an object we are looking at directly because our attention is directed elsewhere is called ___.

Failure to see an object we are looking at directly because our attention is directed elsewhere is called ___.

In a consumer society, many adults channel creativity into buying things

More Practical Tools for Students Powered by AI Study Helper

Homework AI Solver

Stylized AI Paper Writer

Plagiarism Checker Assistant

Citation AI Academic Writing Tool

In-Class Translation Assistant

AI Note Generator

AI Quiz Answers

Past Exam Questions from University Test Bank

Smart Practice Assistant

Adaptive Practice

Making Your Study Simpler