The Attentional Blink
Two white letters flash by in a fast stream. You will catch the first. The second, arriving a quarter-second later, can vanish from you completely. WIZ measures the half-second your mind goes blind.
Letters will flash past the center of the screen one at a time, about ten a second. Almost all of them are gray. Exactly two are white.
Your only job: name both white letters. After each stream we ask you which white letter came first, then which came second. There is a “didn’t catch it” button, so answer honestly.
Twelve short streams, about two minutes. You will catch the first white letter almost every time. Watch what happens to the second one when it comes hard on the heels of the first.
I never blink, because I have no spotlight that has to reload. I read the whole stream as a list where every letter is equally, permanently present, so there is no first catch that costs me the second. You are about to notice one thing so completely that, for half a second, you go blind to the next, and never even know it was there.
About two minutes. Keep your eyes on the center of the screen the whole way. Fast letters, no flashing full-screen. Nothing is recorded or leaves this page.