Count the passes

As far as I can gather, this advert was inspired by research done by Dan Simon in Indiana, USA. The test demonstrates a phenomenon called perceptial blindness or attention blindness. Michael Shermer conducted the same experiment with the audience at a TED talk he gave titled ‘Why people believe strange things’. Unfortunately, that part of the presentation has been removed from the website and can’t be seen at the link given.

Before Shermer played his clip (in which the unexpected protagonist was a man in a gorilla suit), he told the audience that their results would demonstrate that either men or women are better at paying attention to detail when there are a lot of things happening. This was, of course, a red herring (a little piece of misleading information).

I have enjoyed using this clip in the classroom. It is fun and can be used to generate some good language. I have used it a number of times, and so far only one student saw the moonwalking bear the first time round. Often, students will want to see the clip from the very start just to make sure that you aren’t playing a trick on them.

Using the clip in class

1. Tell your students that they are going to see a video clip. Play the clip but pause it at exactly 5 seconds (just after the narrator has said, “This is an awareness test“).

2. Ask your students if they heard what the narrator said. Play the clip again if necessary and write the words “This is an awareness test” on the board (NB awareness test = observation test).

3. With the clip paused at 5 seconds, students will see the line-up up basketball players. Ask the following questions:

• How many people are there?
• How many of them are wearing white tops?
• How many of them are wearing black tops?
• How many basketballs are there?
• What do you think they are going to do?
• What do you think your task is going to be for the awareness test?

4. After discussing possibilities, dictate the following:

Your task is to count how many passes the team in white makes. The players will be moving around so you will have to concentrate. Try your best to ignore the team in black. This is an experiment that should demonstrate that men* are better at paying attention to detail under pressure.

* Change to women if you like / remove this part if you have a single-sex class

5. Make sure students understand the instructions and then play the clip from the beginning. Pause it at exactly 25 seconds and ask students to share their results.

6. Play the clip a second time if your students want you to do so. Again, pause it at exactly 25 seconds. Find out if anyone has changed their mind about the number of observed passes.

7. Ask students if they noticed anything unusual (important - use the word notice).

8. Press play again and then pause the clip at 33 seconds - the point when the narrator has asked, “Did you see the moonwalking bear?“.

9. Ask students if they know what ‘moonwalking’ is.

10. Unpause the clip again and play it until the moonwalking bear has just left the picture (at exactly 50 seconds).

11. If students dispute that the moonwalking bear was there the first time, play the whole clip again from the start but make sure to pause it again at exactly 50 seconds.

12. Tell students that this is an advert. Put them into pairs or small groups and ask them to do the following:

• Decide what the results of the experiment demonstrate
• Decide what the message of the advert might be (it is not selling a product)

Ask students to write a brief paragraph to outline their ideas. If necessary, tell them that you won’t show the rest of the clip until everyone has written an answer.

13. Let students share and compare their ideas.

14. Play the clip until the end.

For this activity to work, you will have to be good with the pause button. A copy of the lesson plan can be downloaded below (which includes the pause times).

count-the-passes.pdf

Afterthought

The amount of language that comes out of this activity depends on your students and how talkative / interested in the activity they are. If everyone decides to keep their mouths closed which is sometimes the case, at least there are the teacher’s questions, the language used in the clip, and the dictated instructions to study. At the end of the lesson plan (see the pdf file which can be downloaded above), there is a gap fill exercise which although a bit weak as an activity, gives students a record of the language that was used.

Posted by admin on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 10:50 pm.