Vital Signs: Perceptions: What Clown? I Was Talking With My Mom

Vital Signs: Perceptions: What Clown? I Was Talking With My Mom: "In a study, a man in an outlandish outfit on a unicycle was not enough to draw the notice of many cellphone users.


How much do you miss when you are talking on a cell phone?

Researchers at Western Washington University decided to study whether pedestrians engrossed in a phone conversation would notice obvious events around them. “I was trying to think about what kind of distraction we could put out there, and I talked to this student who had a unicycle,” said Ira E. Hyman Jr., a professor ofpsychology. “He said, ‘What’s more, I own a clown suit.’ You don’t have a student who unicycles in a clown suit every day, so you have to take advantage of these things.”

The student, Dustin Randall, donned the suit — purple and yellow, with polka-dot sleeves, red shoes and a red nose — then hopped on the unicycle and pedaled around a square. After pedestrians crossed the square, researchers asked them, “Did you see anything unusual?”

Among pedestrians who were listening to music or walking alone, 1 in 3 replied that they had just seen a clown on a unicycle, according to a report on the study, in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology. Nearly 60 percent of those who were walking with a friend mentioned the clown. But among people who had been talking on a cellphone, the figure was 8 percent.

When the pedestrians were asked, “Did you see the unicycling clown?” the rates rose — to as high as 71 percent for people walking with a friend. But among those who had been talking on a cellphone, just 25 percent said they had. TARA PARKER-POPE"