How attention works: why you can miss a gorilla in plain sight
Why you hear your own name across a noisy room
Not one word from across a noisy room reaches you all evening. Then your own name does, and you turn before you know why. How did it get through?
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1
In 1959, Neville Moray tried it with headphones. His listeners repeated aloud the words in one ear, and in the other ear, the one they ignored, he slipped in each listener's own name.
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2
About one listener in three heard it. Tests since then, up to a large one in 2021, find nearly the same share. Other words in the ignored ear almost never got through.
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