Inattentional Blindness
Inattentional blindness is a cognitive phenomenon where individuals fail to notice unexpected yet clearly visible objects or events in their environment because their attention is focused on something else. This can affect anyone, regardless of visual acuity, and typically arises in situations with overwhelming sensory stimuli. The brain processes a limited amount of information at a time, leading to gaps in awareness where significant details may be overlooked or misinterpreted.
Research, including the well-known "invisible gorilla" experiment, illustrates how easily our attention can be diverted; participants concentrating on counting basketball passes often miss a man in a gorilla suit walking through the scene. Factors influencing inattentional blindness include conspicuity, which refers to how well an item stands out; cognitive workload, which occurs when multitasking; expectations based on past experiences; and individual capacity for processing information, which can vary by age and alertness. Understanding inattentional blindness helps explain why people may overlook important details in everyday situations, shedding light on the complexities of human perception and attention.
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Subject Terms
Inattentional Blindness
"Inattentional blindness" is the term used to explain an individual’s failure to notice a clearly visible yet unanticipated event or object in his or her line of sight because the person’s attention was drawn to another event or object occurring simultaneously. The phenomenon may affect any individual and is not tied to actual visual shortcomings. It occurs when an individual is overwhelmed by various stimuli taking place in his or her immediate environment at the same time. Too much stimulus makes it impossible for the individual to properly process all the incoming information, so the person’s brain fills in some of the gaps on its own, sometimes incorrectly, resulting in inaccuracies that reflect inattentional blindness.
Overview
Inattentional blindness is rooted in how the human brain works. While the quantity of information that can be taken in at any given time by one’s brain is virtually limitless, the pace of cognitive processing is more restrictive. As a result, the brain cannot process all incoming information the same way. Large amounts of information are taken in without being vetted at all. In one famous experiment on inattentional blindness called the invisible gorilla test, for example, subjects are asked to watch a video of people in either black or white T-shirts passing a basketball back and forth and count the number of passes. At one point in the video, a man in a gorilla suit walks through the scene. After the video is over, subjects are asked if the video contained anything out of the ordinary. Up to 50 percent of the subjects report being so focused on the basketball that they did not see the man in the gorilla suit.
The human brain scans approximately thirty to forty pieces of sensory information each second until something snags its attention for further processing. Everything else is accepted without further filtering, sometimes causing important details to be lost or filled in incorrectly by the brain before reaching a person’s consciousness. The information that the brain chooses to focus on for detailed processing is determined by four factors: conspicuity, cognitive workload and task interference, expectation, and capacity.
Conspicuity refers to the extent to which information stands apart to capture attention. It can pertain to the physical properties of information, such as brightness or contrast, that give the input more prominence. Conspicuity can also refer to the perceived relevance of incoming information. An example is when someone filters out other conversations at a loud restaurant but suddenly hears his or her name mentioned at another table. The name holds meaning for the person and therefore jumps out from otherwise irrelevant chatter.
Cognitive workload and task interference are when an individual is engaged in multiple thought processes or tasks at the same time. Inattentional blindness may occur when a portion of one’s attention is diverted to other tasks, such as typing an email while talking on the telephone at work. The individual may realize that he or she left a word or key concept out of the email or suddenly lost track of the details of the telephone discussion. Conversely, having too little to do may cause boredom and reduce cognitive attention, sparking another phenomenon, known as automaticity, in which routine tasks are performed with little conscious awareness. A common example is zoning out while driving a familiar route and suddenly finding oneself at a point further along in the journey without remembering the details of getting there.
Expectation plays an important role in one’s ability to pay attention and discern information. Packaging provides a good example. If an individual uses a specific brand packaged in a certain way, he or she may grab a similar item off the shelf without noticing details that indicate the product is different, such as a new formula or a rival brand.
Capacity is the extent of a person’s ability to pay attention to stimuli. An older individual may have diminished attention capacity compared to a child, or a fatigued person might notice less than a well-rested, fully alert individual.
Bibliography
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