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What Is Inattentional Blindness? by Exjoker(m): 8:58am On Sep 29, 2014 |
Have you ever wondered why you usually miss glaring bloopers in major motion pictures? If you are like most people, you probably believe that just because your eyes are open, you are seeing. So why do we sometimes fail to see things that are right in front of our eyes? The reality is that attention plays a major role in visual perception. One of the primary reasons why you fail to notice these mistakes in films and television programs is a psychological phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. When your attention is focused on one demanding task, such as paying attention to the main character in a movie, you might not notice unexpected things entering your visual field. Research on Inattentional Blindness The term was first coined by psychologists Arien Mack and Irvin Rock who observed the phenomenon during their perception and attention experiments. "Because this inability to perceive, this sighted blindness, seemed to be caused by the fact that subjects were not attending to the stimulus but instead were attending to something else ... we labeled this phenomenon inattentional blindness (IB)," they explained. One of the best-known experiments demonstrating inattentional blindness is the Simons and Chabris "invisible gorilla test." In this experiment, researchers asked participants to watch a video of people tossing a basketball and the observers were told to count the number of passes or to keep track of the number of throws versus bounce passes. Afterwards, the participants were asked if they had noticed anything unusual while watching the video. In most of the tests, approximately 50 percent of the participants reported seeing nothing out of the ordinary. What was it they had missed? In some instances, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit strolled through the scene, turned to the camera, thumped her chest and walked away. How on earth could so many people could miss such an obvious and unexpected thing right before their eyes? Because their attention was focused elsewhere on a demanding task, the gorilla basically became invisible. Explanations for Inattentional Blindness Why does inattentional blindness occur? Rather than focusing on every tiny detail in the world around us, we tend to concentrate on things that are important and then rely on our existing schemas to fill in the rest. This is highly economical and allows us to focus our existing attentional, cognitive, and processing resources on the things that are most important, while still allowing us to have a cohesive and seamless experience of the world around us. One of the reasons why people so often miss the gorilla sauntering through a scene of people playing basketball is simply because the stimulus lacks what is known as ecological validity. How often does a gorilla show up in the middle of a basketball game? Because this is unlikely to happen in a real- world setting, we are simply less likely to notice it. The salience of the stimuli is important. While we do sometimes fail to miss essential information in the world around us, we are generally pretty good at noticing relevant information such as a car speeding toward us or a deer jumping out of the trees into the road. A Few Real-World Examples of Inattentional Blindness Even though you think you are paying attention to the road, you fail to notice a car swerve into your lane of traffic, resulting in a traffic accident. You are watching a historical film set in ancient Greece. You don't notice a major blooper in which an airplane appears in the background of a pivotal scene. You decide to make a phone call while driving through busy traffic. You fail to notice that the traffic light has turned red, so you run the stop light and end up getting a traffic ticket for inattentive driving. While playing a video game, you are so intently focused on spotting a specific type of "bad guy" that you miss another threat to your character and you end up losing the game. Observations "Simons and Chabis carried out a further experiment in which observers counted the passes made by members of the team dressed in white or the one dressed in black. The gorilla's presence was detected by only 42% of observers when the attended team was the one dressed in white, thus replicating the previous findings. However, the gorilla's presence was detected by 83% of observers when the attended team was the one dressed in black. This shows the impact of similarity between the unexpected stimulus (gorilla) and task-relevant stimuli (members of the attended team)." (Eysenck & Keane, 2011) "Inattentional blindness can be attributed to an overuse of top-down processing . Information that participants were not attending to was filled in with that individual's expectations. In this sense, inattentional blindness is similar to change blindness . However, change blindness generally refers to missing a change in a previously present stimulus, and inattentional blindness generally refers to missing a new stimulus." (Mauldin, K., 2013) The bottom line: Just because your eyes are open doesn't mean you are seeing everything in the world around you. Perception depends upon numerous factors, including attention. Sometimes we miss the things that are right in front of us. References Eysenck, M. W. & Keane, M. T. (2011). Cognitive psychology: A student's handbook . Psychology Press. Mack, A. & Rock, I. (1999). Inattentional blindness: An overview by Arien Mack and Irvin Rock. Retrieved from www.theassc.org/ files/assc/2417.pdf Mauldin, K. (2013). Inattentional blindness. In A. K. Taylor (Ed.). Encyclopedia of human memory. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074. Simons, D. (2012, Sept.). But did you see the gorilla? The problem with inattentional blindness. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ science-nature/but-did-you-see-the-gorilla- the-problem-with-inattentional- blindness-17339778/?no-ist Source: http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/fl/What-Is-Inattentional-Blindness.htm 2 Likes |
Re: What Is Inattentional Blindness? by Nobody: 3:52pm On Sep 29, 2014 |
Excellent post. I learned about this some semesters ago. I'm glad you included the source as well as the references. Good job. Many people post articles and refuse to give credit to whom credit is due. |
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