Oh, wow - I had seen a version of this, years ago, as; I believe, a commercial.
It was a much, much better and far less obvious version, I can't tell because obviously I knew what I was expecting, but I strongly feel with this 1999 version I absolutely would've caught it. Very poorly done compared to the other one I've seen.
Ah, here it is, this one uses a 'moonwalking bear'. Upon seeing them both again, I 110% agree with my assessment that the bear version is far, far superior.
The space the original video uses is too small, and maybe it's that the camera angle is poor; it's so hard to tell but I'd honestly be surprised if too many people fell for the original today.
I actually had troubles following the ball because the gorilla was just too obvious and distracting.
> The space the original video uses is too small, and maybe it's that the camera angle is poor
The whole point is that selective attention can make seeing even very obvious things difficult.
> it's so hard to tell but I'd honestly be surprised if too many people fell for the original today.
I used it on a class full of middle school science students two years ago. 21 out of 24 missed it in the first class. 5 out of 24 in the second, though they insisted no one warned them :D
I actually saw one recently that had a panda walking through, but just to still get everyone who knew what to look for, they altered other properties of the scene and after the panda reveal, then reveal the multiple other, now obvious changes that were made. I won't specify in case someone hasn't seen but it was pretty amazing.
It's kinda like the invisible gorilla experiment: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html