Access selectedItems of an <iron-list> on change - polymer-1.0

Question

Having trouble understanding how to access the selectedItems property of an iron-list. When bound to a property of the parent, I can output it's contents using a template, but an observer or computed binding does not fire when it changes and I can't seem to output it's contents.
If anyone could point out what I'm doing wrong, how I can read the selectedItems for logic, or how I can observe changes to an iron-list selectedItems property, I would greatly appreciate the know how. Thanks.
Below is some example code to show how I am using the selectedItems property of iron-list:
<dom-module id="example-component">
<template>
<iron-list
id="dataList"
items="[[data]]"
as="item"
multi-selection
selection-enabled
selected-items="{{selectedItems}}">
<template>
<span>[[item.data]]</span>
</template>
</iron-list>
<template is="dom-repeat" items="[[selectedItems]]" index-as="index">
<div>[[item.data]]</div> <!-- this displays any selected item -->
</template>
</template>
<script>
Polymer({
is: 'example-component',
properties: {
data: {
type: Array,
value: [
{
'data': "item 0"
},
{
'data': "item 1"
}
]
},
selectedItems:
{
type: Object,
observer: '_selectedItemsChanged'
}
},
_selectedItemsChanged: function(){
console.log(this.selectedItems); //this neither runs nor outputs anything when an item is selected
}
});
</script>

Answer 1

From the docs:
Finally, to observe mutations to arrays (changes resulting from calls to push, pop, shift, unshift, and splice, generally referred to as “splices”), specify a path to an array followed by .splices as an argument to the observer function.
Therefore, remove the selectedItems property and add a manual observer like so:
observers: [
'_selectedItemsChanged(selectedItems.splices)'
],