| Title |
Inattentional blindness reflects limitations on perception, not memory: Evidence from repeated failures of awareness
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, December 2014
|
| DOI | 10.3758/s13423-014-0745-8 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Emily J. Ward, Brian J. Scholl |
| Abstract |
Perhaps the most striking phenomenon of visual awareness is inattentional blindness (IB), in which a surprisingly salient event right in front of you may go completely unseen when unattended. Does IB reflect a failure of perception, or only of subsequent memory? Previous work has been unable to answer this question, due to a seemingly intractable dilemma: ruling out memory requires immediate perceptual reports, but soliciting such reports fuels an expectation that eliminates IB. Here we introduce a way of evoking repeated IB in the same subjects and the same session: we show that observers fail to report seeing salient events' not only when they have no expectation, but also when they have the wrong expectations about the events nature. This occurs when observers must immediately report seeing anything unexpected, even mid-event. Repeated IB thus demonstrates that IB is aptly named: it reflects a genuine deficit in moment-by-moment conscious perception, rather than a form of inattentional amnesia. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 2 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1 | 50% |
| Unknown | 1 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 50% |
| Members of the public | 1 | 50% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 99 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | 1% |
| Unknown | 98 | 99% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 19 | 19% |
| Student > Bachelor | 18 | 18% |
| Student > Master | 16 | 16% |
| Researcher | 11 | 11% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 5 | 5% |
| Other | 13 | 13% |
| Unknown | 17 | 17% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 57 | 58% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 5 | 5% |
| Neuroscience | 5 | 5% |
| Engineering | 3 | 3% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 3 | 3% |
| Other | 8 | 8% |
| Unknown | 18 | 18% |