Greeley West psychology students ran an experiment on their fellow students to test their attention span and how aware they are of their surroundings. They accomplished this by attempting to steal student’s phones out of their pockets without them noticing. 

Sophomore psychology student, Harlow Cropper, said, “In the actual experiment we ran in circles around our subjects and bumped them a little bit while asking them random questions to distract them. Then after a couple of minutes we tried to grab their phone out of their pocket without them noticing.”

The goal of this experiment was to divert the subject’s attention away from the phone in their pocket by asking them personal questions. Then by slightly bumping into the subjects they hopefully wouldn’t notice the attempt to grab the phone. 

Psychology teacher at Greeley West, Mr. Ky Dietz said, “The experiment was meant to demonstrate change blindness and selective attention. Do you actually understand what’s going on outside of your direct line of sight? Then how does that change when you are presented with multiple things that you could potentially focus on.”

By giving the subject multiple things to focus on they are less likely to notice their phone being taken out of their pocket because of their selective attention. 

Sophomore psychology student, Sahlia Gaspar, said, “Our first couple experiments didn’t work at all. We would ask them the question and everything but as soon as we went to grab the phone they noticed right away, but eventually it did end working. It worked really well on Lily East, and Chloe Thompson.”

Eventually, psychology students were able to use the selective attention of subject to grab their phone of out their pocket without them noticing.