chabris

For close to two years Chabris, who teaches at Union College, had been conducting this same experiment.

On day three of the conference, we heard from Chris Chabris, one of the psychologists behind the now-famous "gorilla experiment. "

"We had two students beating up a third, punching him and kicking him and throwing him to the ground, " Chabris says.

Enter Conley, the police officer who ultimately inspired Chabris and Simons' experiments.

Dr. CHRISTOPHER CHABRIS (Co-author, "The Invisible Gorilla" ; Assistant Professor of Psychology, Union College): Thanks for having me.

To simulate Conley's focus on the fleeing suspect, Simons and Chabris gave their undergraduate volunteers very specific instructions.

When psychologists Chabris and Simons first heard about Conley, they were intrigued.

"Only about a third of the subjects reported seeing the fight that we had staged, " says Chabris.

But Chabris and Simons did their best. Their results were published this month in the journal i-Perception.

Chabris says the real danger isn't in this questionable marketing, but in parents shirking roles they are evolutionarily meant to serve.

Chabris says most of their research on inattentional blindness is done in a lab, in front of computers.

Dr. CHABRIS: That's a really interesting point.

This is what researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons proved in an experiment done 10 years ago.

"This underlies problems with using cell phones while driving and all kinds of situations like that, " Chabris says.