Inattentional blindness

Inattentional blindness or perceptual blindness (rarely called inattentive blindness) occurs when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits. When it becomes impossible to attend to all the stimuli in a given situation, a temporary "blindness" effect can occur, as individuals fail to see unexpected but often salient objects or stimuli.[1]

The term was chosen by Arien Mack and Irvin Rock in 1992 and was used as the title of their book of the same name, published by MIT Press in 1998,[2] in which they describe the discovery of the phenomenon and include a collection of procedures used in describing it.[3] A famous study that demonstrated inattentional blindness asked participants whether or not they noticed a person in a gorilla costume walking through the scene of a visual task they had been given.[1]

Research on inattentional blindness suggests that the phenomenon can occur in any individual, independent of cognitive deficits. However, recent evidence shows that patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder performed better attentionally when engaging in inattentional blindness tasks than control patients did,[4] suggesting that some types of neuro-divergence may decrease the effects of this phenomenon. Recent studies have also looked at age differences and inattentional blindness scores, and results show that the effect increases as humans age.[5][6][7] There is mixed evidence that consequential unexpected objects are noticed more: Some studies suggest that humans can detect threatening unexpected stimuli more easily than nonthreatening ones,[8][9] but other studies suggest that this is not the case.[10][11][12] There is some evidence that objects associated with reward are noticed more.[12]

Numerous experiments[13] and art works[14][15][16][17] have demonstrated that inattentional blindness also has an effect on people's perception.

  1. ^ a b Simons, Daniel J.; Chabris, Christopher F. (1999). "Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events" (PDF). Perception. 28 (9): 1059–1074. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.65.8130. doi:10.1068/p281059. PMID 10694957.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Mack1998 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Rock, 1992 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Grossman, Ephraim S.; Hoffman, Yaakov S. G.; Berger, Itai; Zivotofsky, Ari Z. (1 November 2015). "Beating their chests: University students with ADHD demonstrate greater attentional abilities on an inattentional blindness paradigm". Neuropsychology. 29 (6): 882–887. doi:10.1037/neu0000189. PMID 25730730.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference stothart2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Horwood, Sally; Beanland, Vanessa (1 April 2016). "Inattentional blindness in older adults: Effects of attentional set and to-be-ignored distractors" (PDF). Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. 78 (3): 818–828. doi:10.3758/s13414-015-1057-4. PMID 26758974. S2CID 30920168.
  8. ^ New, Joshua J.; German, Tamsin C. (2015). "Spiders at the cocktail party: an ancestral threat that surmounts inattentional blindness". Evolution and Human Behavior. 36 (3): 165–173. Bibcode:2015EHumB..36..165N. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.004.
  9. ^ Gao, Hua; Jia, Zhuowang (10 June 2016). "Detection of Threats under Inattentional Blindness and Perceptual Load". Current Psychology. 36 (4): 733–739. doi:10.1007/s12144-016-9460-0. S2CID 148095499.
  10. ^ Wiemer, Julian; Gerdes, Antje B. M.; Pauli, Paul (7 January 2012). "The effects of an unexpected spider stimulus on skin conductance responses and eye movements: an inattentional blindness study". Psychological Research. 77 (2): 155–166. doi:10.1007/s00426-011-0407-7. ISSN 0340-0727. PMID 22227916. S2CID 206984173.
  11. ^ Calvillo, Dustin P.; Hawkins, Whitney C. (2 April 2016). "Animate Objects are Detected More Frequently than Inanimate Objects in Inattentional Blindness Tasks Independently of Threat". The Journal of General Psychology. 143 (2): 101–115. doi:10.1080/00221309.2016.1163249. ISSN 0022-1309. PMID 27055078. S2CID 205435279.
  12. ^ a b Stothart, Cary R.; Wright, Timothy J.; Simons, Daniel J.; Boot, Walter R. (1 February 2017). "The costs (or benefits) associated with attended objects do little to influence inattentional blindness". Acta Psychologica. 173: 101–105. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.12.012. PMID 28039794.
  13. ^ Most, Steven B. (2010). "What's "inattentional" about inattentional blindness?". Consciousness and Cognition. 19 (4): 1102–1104. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.01.011. PMID 20181502. S2CID 33719183.
  14. ^ Levy, Ellen K. (6 January 2012). "An Artistic Exploration of Inattention Blindness". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 5: 174. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2011.00174. PMC 3252564. PMID 22232588.
  15. ^ Martinez-Conde, Susana (22 November 2014). "Illusion Chasers: Artist Ellen Levy Steals Your Attention". Scientific American. Retrieved 1 June 2018.
  16. ^ Corwin, William (6 April 2016). "Truth in the Visual Arts Skepticism in the Work of Ellen K. Levy and Patricia Olynyk". brooklynrail.org/. The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
  17. ^ G'Sell, Eileen (19 March 2016). "Sumptuous Skeptics: Ellen K. Levy and Patricia Olynyk Stage Creative Inquisition". artefuse.com. Arte Fuse. Archived from the original on 15 August 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2018.