How Observant Of You!

Take a look at this video.

How did you react?

I admit that when I first watched this I didn’t spot one difference and I consider myself to be observant! Clearly I’m not.

I once tried something similar in school when I changed my tie five times over the course of a day to test how observant my class were. Most pupils in my class spotted the change after tie one but interestingly none of my colleagues did! Attention is a limited resource.

This video is actually something used to raise awareness of cycle safety (produced by Transport for London and the Mayor of London) and just how much we notice in our environment and it’s well worth showing to children and adults whether from a safety point of view or not.

But it’s probably worthwhile not watching the whole video in one go but pressing pause at 34 seconds precisely. At this point get your viewing audience to volunteer who they think the culprit is.

Do they think it is the maid, the butler or Lord Smithe’s wife?

Why do they think that? Is it their testimony, their posture, level of confidence, tone of voice?

This of course, is just a distraction because then you can play the rest of the video and this will show the behind the scenes clip.

Whoever you show this to they will be amazed that paintings, props, rugs and even the murder victim are switched. I didn’t even notice the detective’s coat had changed and couldn’t believe my eyes that Lord Smithe was a different actor.

The moral of this video: “It’s easy to miss something you are not looking for. On a busy road this could be fatal. Look out for cyclists.”

That goes for missing things in class too. We might miss children falling behind in a particular subject. We might miss an important wellbeing issue because a student puts on a brave face and hides their feelings. We might miss children who are being bullied. We might miss children being abused.

Links

If you enjoyed doing this test then take a look at what some psychology students did in this video: