A common type of car-motorcycle accident is the car turning left in front of the motorcycle on the left. Even when the car’s driver turned in his/her head to look before turning, he/she reports not seeing the motorcycle.

1. A common type of car-motorcycle accident is the car turning left in front of the motorcycle on the left. Even when the car’s driver turned in his/her head to look before turning, he/she reports not seeing the motorcycle. Why didn’t the driver see the motorcycle? Answer in three sentences or less.

2. Define bottom-up attention.

3. Describe the Stroop test. What does it tell us about our attention abilities?

4. 150 subjects were shown a one-minute film which featured a car driving through the countryside followed by a traffic accident. Immediately afterwards the students were questioned about the film. 50 subjects were asked “how fast were the car going when they hit each other?”; another 50 were asked “how fast were the car going when they smashed each other?”; the remaining 50 participants were not asked a question at all (i.e. the control group). Their answers were very inconsistent (and they were not important to the study).

One week later: without seeing the film again the subjects answered ten questions, one of which was a critical to the study: “Did you see any broken glass? Yes or no?” There was no broken glass on the original film.

Findings: Participants who were asked how fast the cars were going when they smashed were more likely to report seeing broken glass.