Now You See It by Cathy Davidson

A video is put on, and in the beginning of this video your told to count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the ball. By the time the scene is over, most of the people watching the video have a number in their head. What these people missed was the gorilla walking through as they were so focused on counting the number of passes between the white team. Would you have noticed the gorilla? According to Cathy Davidson this is called attention blindness. As said by Davidson, "Attention blindness is the key to everything we do as individuals, from how we work in groups to what we value in our classrooms, at work, and in ourselves (Davidson, 2011, pg.4)." Davidson served as the vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke University helping to create the Program in Science and Information Studies and the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience. She also holds highly distinguished chairs in English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke and has written a dozen different books. By the end of the introduction Davidson poses five different questions to the general population. Davidson's questions include, "Where do our patterns of attention come from? How can what we know about attention help us change how we teach and learn? How can the science of attention alter our ideas about how we test and what we measure? How can we work better with others with different skills and expertise in order to see what we're missing in a complicated and interdependent world? How does attention change as we age, and how can understanding the science of attention actually help us along the way? (Davidson, 2011, p.19-20)." Although Davidson hits many good points in Now You See It, overall the book isn't valid. She doesn't exactly provide answers ...

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...book. She has given many great ideas, however she neglects to provide any plans to put her ideas into action, too many of the sources used are outdated and personal and is a hypocrite when it comes to her proponent of the problems with attention blindness. Davidson's Now You See It was a good attempt in providing useful insight into attention blindness and where education today is progressing into, but unfortunately falls short. While writing the book she loses sight of who her audience it, the general public, resulting in a poorly put together book. She could have written a far more valid book if she had left the personal information out, found better ways to connect to the reader and made the counter arguments to her views. As said before, she had good intensions and made a good attempt, but in the end she didn't fulfill what she set out to do in the introduction.