My husband likes to tell this story about one day when I was coming to pick him up from work:
He was in a hurry to get going, so instead of waiting at the office, where I was expecting him, he walked up the street to the main road, thus saving—or so he hoped—the time it would take me to drive down the street and turn around.
The plan backfired, however, because I, concentrating on the job at hand, didn't see him waving frantically on the sidewalk. I drove to the usual place, and he had to walk back.
Thanks to our alma mater, I finally have a comeback for those embarrassing moments when the entire lunch table is thinking, "How dumb can this woman be?"
I didn't see him where I didn't expect him, not because I am stupid, but because I am highly intelligent!
Check it out: a study at the University of Rochester has discovered a strong correlation between high intelligence and a significantly reduced ability to notice background motions.
The authors explain that in most scenarios, background movement is less important than small moving objects in the foreground, for example driving a car, walking down a hall or moving your eyes across the room.
As a person's IQ increases, so too does his or her ability to filter out distracting background motion and concentrate on the foreground.
In an initial study on 12 people, there was a 64% correlation between motion suppression and IQ scores. In this larger study on 53 people, a 71% correlation was found.
Ha!
May I nominate someone for this study?? Ralph will be thrilled - but then, he always knew this!
I wonder if this is related to suppressing background noise as well. But it won't be 100% correlated (not even in the studies, I see) because Jon's IQ is something astronomical and he can't filter out the same kinds of noise that I can.
