Information for readers of "Mind Hacks"
by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb

This page provides links to information about Professor Daniel Simons' experiments on visual awareness that were described in Mind Hacks by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb-- you can try the experiments for yourself. From here you also can visit the Visual Cognition Laboratory web site and view videos from studies of visual awareness from our lab.

Visit the Visual Cognition Lab
This link takes you to the Visual Cognition Laboratory web site where you can learn about Professor Simons's research, lab members, publications, and much more.

Visit the Beckman Institute Home Page
The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is an interdisciplinary research institute devoted to basic research in the physical sciences, computation, engineering, biology, behavior, and cognition. It is home to the Visual Cognition Laboratory.

View the "basketball" video
This link takes you to the basketball video from an experiment by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. When viewing the video, try to count the total number of times that the people wearing white pass the basketball. Do not count the passes made by the people wearing black. When you're done, visit the main lab web site for more information. Please note that this video is copyrighted and is available on this web site for viewing purposes only -- it may not be downloaded, copied, saved or used for any other purpose. If you are interested in using this video in any other context, it is available on DVD from Viscog Productions, Inc. Please see the link below. (Note that the University of Illinois is not in any way affiliated with Viscog Productions and this link does not represent an endorsement of Viscog Productions or its products by the University.)

Read a Scholarpedia.org article on inattention that Prof. Simons authored
This link takes you to a Scholarpedia.org article (a peer-reviewed science wiki) on inattentional blindness that Prof. Simons wrote. It provides a review of the science underlying this phenomenon and is written for a general audience.

See videos from other experiments
Prof. Simons has conducted a number of studies of attention, perception, and memory. This link takes you to the Visual Cognition Laboratory demos page where you can view other videos from his reseach. Please note that all of the videos on the demos page are copyrighted and are available on this web site for viewing purposes only -- they may not be downloaded, copied, or saved or used for any other purpose.

Request a reprint
This link takes you to the Visual Cognition Laboratory reprint archive where you can request a reprint of many of Prof. Simons' publications. Here you can request a copy of the journal article about the "basketball" studies and our other papers. The complete reference for the basketball article is:
Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). "Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events." Perception, 28, 1059-1074.

Purchase the DVD
This link takes you the Viscog Productions web site. The site has information about the Surprising Studies of Visual Awareness Volume 1, a DVD that includes many of Prof. Simons' videos and demonstrations (including the "gorilla/basketball" video). The DVD is the only form in which any of our videos are available for use, and it is designed as a presentation tool, with menu-driven access to a variety of clips. (Note that the University of Illinois is not in any way affiliated with Viscog Productions and this link does not represent an endorsement of Viscog Productions or its products by the University.)