Inattentional Blindness and Attention: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Failures of Awareness
Final Report Abstract
We sometimes fail to consciously notice stimuli right in front of our eyes if those stimuli occur unexpectedly and our attention is diverted by another task. This phenomenon has been termed inattentional blindness and can have fatal consequences in daily-life situations. Within the scope of the granted research proposal we have investigated the determinants and mechanisms of this specific failure of awareness. Five of six originally planned and eleven additional studies were conducted. Contrary to our hypotheses, the originally planned research generated null findings: We could not corroborate our initial hypothesis that individual differences in inattentional blindness that originates from limitation in central resources can be predicted by individual differences in central cognitive capacity (working memory, inhibitory control). Likewise, we could not corroborate our initial hypothesis that individual differences in inattentional blindness that arise from spatial distribution of attention can be predicted by individual breadth of attention. We then widened our scope in investigating the determinants and mechanisms of inattentional blindness; we additionally investigated the relationship between inattentional blindness and personality traits and concentrated on characteristics of the unexpected object as well as contextual factors. Across all 16 studies, we derived at the following conclusion: In accordance with previous research, our findings indicate that a multitude of situational factors, including features of the unexpected object (duration the object is visible but not its speed) and characteristics of the context (attentional set, expectations but not priming), influence the probability of inattentional blindness. These factors might even determine a fixed probability that an unexpected object is noticed in a specific situation. In contrast, individual differences in cognitive abilities or personality traits are unreliable predictors of individual susceptibility to inattentional blindness. While working memory capacity indeed influenced the probability of noticing in some previous studies and under certain conditions in the data presented here, this relationship is only small and strongly dependent on specific properties of the situation and the participants. The same holds true for the personality traits openness to experience and absorption. Thus, individual differences in personality and cognition do not seem to further differentiate the probability of inattentional blindness beyond situational aspects (or at least not reliably or substantially). That is, while there is a fixed probability for all observers to notice an unexpected object in a specific situation (deterministic aspect of inattentional blindness), we cannot predict who exactly will belong to the group of noticers and who will belong to the group of missers on the basis of personality traits and cognitive abilities (stochastic aspect of inattentional blindness). Noticing of an unexpected object was not even related across a static and a dynamic inattentional blindness implementation, which strongly contradicts the notion of stable individual differences in inattentional blindness. As part of the overarching goal to further our understanding of the mechanisms that drive inattentional blindness, we have also begun to unravel the fate of those unexpected objects that are not noticed by the observer. Our findings indicate that unexpected objects that remain unconscious due to inattentional blindness are indeed substantially processed. This processing does even seem to go beyond perceptual features and most likely includes higher-level semantic content. The research was reported on by Süddeutsche Zeitung (“Der unsichtbare Gorilla“, 12.11.2015) and by Forschung Aktuell („Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst“, Nr. 6/2017).
Publications
- (2015). Does semantic preactivation reduce inattentional blindness? Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 77, 759–767
Kreitz, C., Schnuerch, R., Furley, P., Gibbons, H., & Memmert, D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0819-8) - (2015). Inattentional blindness and individual differences in cognitive abilities. PLoS ONE, 10, e0134675
Kreitz, C., Furley, P., Memmert, D., & Simons, D. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134675) - (2015). Some see it, some don't: Exploring the relation between inattentional blindness and personality factors. PLoS ONE, 10, e0128158
Kreitz, C., Schnuerch, R., Gibbons, H., & Memmert, D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0128158) - (2015). Working-memory performance is related to spatial breadth of attention. Psychological Research, 79, 1034-1041
Kreitz, C., Furley, P., Memmert, D., & Simons, D. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-014-0633-x) - (2016). Does working memory capacity predict cross-modally induced failures of awareness? Consciousness and Cognition, 39, 18-27
Kreitz, C., Furley, P., Simons, D. J., & Memmert, D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.11.010) - (2016). Inattentional blindness is influenced by exposure time not motion speed. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69, 495-505
Kreitz, C., Furley, P., & Memmert, D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1055771) - (2016). Not quite so blind: Semantic processing despite inattentional blindness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42, 459-463
Schnuerch, R., Kreitz, C., Gibbons, H., & Memmert, D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000205) - (2016). The influence of attention set, working memory capacity, and expectations on inattentional blindness. Perception, 45, 386-399
Kreitz, C., Furley, P., Memmert, S., & Simons, D. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006615614465)
