How Well Can People Pay Attention?

There was a really cool bit on NPR's Science Friday this afternoon evaluating how aware humans are while focusing on a specific task. The conclusions are pretty fascinating!

The following videos were part of a study from Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, testing how well people can pay attention. Try it out!

How did you do? Were you surprised by the result?

Now try this test:

Tricky, huh? It kind of made me wonder if things like talking on the cellphone while driving should be illegal!

To listen to the entire segment from Science Friday, you can find the podcast here.