Try reading the following:
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulacity uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. Tnahks to the phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearchres at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
Despite the words above being absurdly misspelled, chances are you were able to understand the whole thing. That’s because over your years of reading, your brain has developed shortcuts to spare itself from processing every single letter of a word.
Our brain creates shortcuts to avoid tedious processing, usually a good thing. Check out this video on selective attention before scrolling down.
Did you spot the gorilla brazenly walking across the room—and even pausing to beat his chest—as the players passed around the basketball?
If you didn’t, you’re not alone. About 50 percent of viewers are so focused on counting passes that they entirely miss the ape.
And if something that big and hairy can be overlooked, it’s worth considering how many other times our reliance on mental shortcuts to breeze through our daily routines is blinding us to the extraordinary.
Want to try another? Try this one before you scroll down.
Almost everyone spots the gorilla tackling the banana..
But almost no one notices the dancing chicken.
That’s in part because the latter video has more going on than the previous one, but it’s also because it plays on your brain’s tendency to create shortcuts that focus on the familiar and expected. The previous video trained you to look out for a gorilla, so this time you spotted the banana while it acted like an ape by beating its chest, and then the actual gorilla, but at the expense of seeing something that was entirely new.