Final answer:
The assertion that the 'Invisible Gorilla' study by Chabris and Simons demonstrates that physical salience is key in attention is false. The study and subsequent research illustrate the concept of inattentional blindness, where focused attention on a particular task can lead to missing other unexpected visible stimuli in the environment.
Step-by-step explanation:
Chabris and Simons' 'Invisible Gorilla' study is often mistaken as evidence that the physical salience of a stimulus is the key determinant of attention. However, this assertion is false. In the study, participants were asked to count the number of times the team dressed in white passed the basketball. Despite a person in a black gorilla costume walking among the players, nearly half of the participants did not notice the gorilla. This phenomenon, known as inattentional blindness, demonstrates that when people are focused on a particular task, they can become blind to other unexpected but clearly visible events or objects in their environment.
Another similar experiment as part of the research on inattentional blindness showed that when participants were instructed to focus on one color of moving objects on the screen, around one third of them failed to notice an unexpected red cross appearing. Motivation can also affect perception, evidenced by examples where expectation and desire to detect a particular stimulus can lead to improved sensory discrimination, such as signal detection theory applications. Thus, attention, rather than just the salience of a stimulus, plays a critical role in what we perceive.