title: And now for something completely different: Inattentional blindness during a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch.
abstract: Perceptual science has frequently benefited from studying illusions created outside of academia. Here, we describe a striking, but little-known, example of inattentional blindness from the British comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Viewers fail to attend to several highly incongruous characters in the sketch, despite these characters being clearly visible onscreen. The sketch has the potential to be a valuable research and teaching resource, as well as providing a vivid illustration of how people often fail to see something completely different.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK; e-mail: r.wiseman@herts.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wiseman
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK; e-mail: caroline.watt@ed.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Watt
keywords: Monty Python; attention; illusion; inattentional blindness; perception