Question

Gary is increasingly bored as Tom spends most of their lunch meeting bragging about his latest project. So while Tom is focused on himself, Gary moves Tom's coffee cup so that Tom will likely knock it over the next time he reaches for it. Gary also moves Tom's fork so that he will grasp the sauce-covered tines rather than the handle when he picks it up. Gary is relying on _____ to play these pranks on his friend.

a. prosopagnosia
b. change blindness
c. functional fixedness
d. ego-syntactic perception

Answer 1

Gary utilizes change blindness for his pranks, exploiting Tom's lack of attention to his immediate environment due to his preoccupation with self-focused storytelling.

Step-by-step explanation:

Gary is relying on change blindness to play these pranks on his friend. Change blindness is a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a change in a visual stimulus is introduced and the observer does not notice it. In this scenario, Gary is taking advantage of the fact that Tom is so absorbed in his own storytelling that he is likely to be unaware of the changes made to the placement of his coffee cup and fork. Gary's assumption is that Tom has a strong expectation that his environment will remain constant, and because his attention is elsewhere, he will not notice the subtle changes.