Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsUnderstanding Inattentional BlindnessCausesInfluential FactorsExamples
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Understanding Inattentional Blindness
Causes
Influential Factors
Examples
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Inattentional blindness involves failing to perceive something because your attention is focused on something else, such as a task, object, or person. For example, intentional blindness can often contribute to traffic accidents when a driver’s attention is elsewhere, causing them to miss important information.
At a GlanceInattentional blindness happens when we don’t notice something in our visual field because we are busy focusing on something else. Researchers believe the phenomenon is linked to our limited attentional abilities, but others suggest it might also be connected to memory. No matter the cause, it can have important real-world implications, including problems with distracted driving and workplace safety.
At a Glance
Inattentional blindness happens when we don’t notice something in our visual field because we are busy focusing on something else. Researchers believe the phenomenon is linked to our limited attentional abilities, but others suggest it might also be connected to memory. No matter the cause, it can have important real-world implications, including problems with distracted driving and workplace safety.
They described it as a type of ‘sighted blindness’ leading to an inability to perceive relevant environmental stimuli.
Attentionplays a significant role invisual perception. When something else draws your attention, it increases the likelihood that you’ll fail to notice even the most conspicuous things in your environment.
Inattentional blindness is one type of visual awareness failure that might cause you to miss seemingly obvious things around you, like a deer darting into the road or continuity errors in movies.
When you focus hard on one thing, you miss other important details that are right in front of you. For example, when you are focused on the actions of the main character in a film, you might not notice unexpected things entering your visual field.
The Invisible Gorilla Experiment
Afterward, the participants were asked if they had noticed anything unusual while watching the video. Across all the tests, approximately 50% of the participants reported seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
But in reality, something oddhadhappened. Sometimes, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit strolled through the scene, turned to the camera, thumped her chest, and walked away.
While it may seem impossible that the participants missed such a sight since their attention was focused elsewhere and on a demanding task, intentional blindness essentially made the gorilla invisible.
Inattentional Blindness vs. Change BlindnessChange blindnessis a similar phenomenon that is closely related to inattentional blindness. While inattentional blindness involves failing to notice something in a visual scene, change blindness happens when people fail to see a change in a visual scene.
Inattentional Blindness vs. Change Blindness
Change blindnessis a similar phenomenon that is closely related to inattentional blindness. While inattentional blindness involves failing to notice something in a visual scene, change blindness happens when people fail to see a change in a visual scene.
What Causes Inattentional Blindness
The exact reasons why inattentional blindness happens are still not fully understood, but psychologists believe that a few different factors appear to play a role.
Limited Attentional Resources
The fact is that our attentional and processing capabilities are limited. Because of this, we have to find ways offiltering out distractionsin order to focus on what’s most relevant to us at any given moment.
Rather than focusing on every tiny detail in the world around us, we tend to concentrate on things that are most important, relying on our existingschemasto “fill in the blanks.” This approach is highly economical.
As our attentional, cognitive, and processing resources are limited, relying on schemas allows us to dedicate these resources to what matters most while still allowing us to have complete, seamless experiences.
Salience of the Stimuli
One of the reasons why people so often “miss the gorilla,” so to speak, is simply because the stimulus does not fit into their idea of what a basketball game is supposed to look like. A gorilla showing up in the middle of a basketball game is unlikely to happen in a real-world setting, so we are less likely to notice it.
When something isn’t relevant to the situation and won’t help you to better understand or carry out the task at hand, you tend just to ignore it.
That said, while we do sometimes fail to miss things in the world around us, we are generally pretty good at noticing information that is relevant to us, such as a car speeding toward us or a deer jumping out of the trees into the road. Of course, this is notalwaysthe case.
Limitations of Memory
Some researchers suggest that memory limitations might contribute to inattentional blindness. Some experiments suggest that people do perceive this information; they just don’t recall seeing it when asked because it was not encoded in short-term memory.
Such findings suggest that this might not be intentional blindness as much as it is intentional amnesia.
Factors That Influence Inattentional Blindness
There are certain factors that can affect inattentional blindness.
Similarity to Attended Stimuli
The similarity between the unexpected stimulus (gorilla) and task-relevant stimuli (members of the black team) can influence whether or not intentional blindness happens.
Conditions That Affect Attention
According to the researchers, this may happen because people with ADHD have a different cognitive style that, while making it more difficult to attend to repeated stimuli, gives them an edge when it comes to noticing novel or dynamic stimuli in their visual environment.
Age
Evidence also seems to suggest that intentional blindness tends to become worse as people grow older. In one study, 89% of older adults experienced inattentional blindness on a detection task, whereas only 5% of younger adults did.
Examples of Inattentional Blindness
We all experience inattentional blindness from time to time, such as in these potential situations:
Inattentional blindness can also have critical real-world effects. For example, not noticing something in your visual environment might lead to accidents whiledrivingor at work.
It has been implicated in traffic accidents. Research suggests that both younger and older drivers tend to be more prone to the effects of inattentional blindness, which may be linked to the increased rates of traffic accidents in both age groups.
In the workplace, intentional blindness can also contribute to accidents that affect safety and well-being. While it has been suggested that expertise and experience might mitigate such effects, research has found that expertise appears to have no influence on whether or not people experience intentional blindness.
What This Means For YouThough it is not possible to avoid all instances of inattentional blindness, it’s important to remember this very natural occurrence—particularly when you are in a disagreement with someone about the full scope of a situation.Your brain is sophisticated enough to help you register and interpret visual cues that it thinks will provide you with the most value. But, in its efforts, visual information—both important and not—can sometimes get overlooked.
What This Means For You
Though it is not possible to avoid all instances of inattentional blindness, it’s important to remember this very natural occurrence—particularly when you are in a disagreement with someone about the full scope of a situation.Your brain is sophisticated enough to help you register and interpret visual cues that it thinks will provide you with the most value. But, in its efforts, visual information—both important and not—can sometimes get overlooked.
Though it is not possible to avoid all instances of inattentional blindness, it’s important to remember this very natural occurrence—particularly when you are in a disagreement with someone about the full scope of a situation.
Your brain is sophisticated enough to help you register and interpret visual cues that it thinks will provide you with the most value. But, in its efforts, visual information—both important and not—can sometimes get overlooked.
Why Change Blindness Happens to Us
10 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.National Safety Council.Understanding distracted driving and inattentional blindness.Rock I, Mack A.Inattentional Blindness. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1998.Wright TJ, Roque NA, Boot WR, Stothart C.Attention capture, processing speed, and inattentional blindness.Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018;190:72-77. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.07.005Simons DJ, Chabris CF.Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.Perception. 1999;28(9):1059-1074. doi:10.1068/p281059Wood K, Simons DJ.Processing without noticing in inattentional blindness: A replication of Moore and Egeth (1997) and Mack and Rock (1998).Atten Percept Psychophys. 2019;81(1):1-11. doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1629-1American Psychological Association.Sights unseen.Grossman ES, Hoffman YSG, Berger I, Zivotofsky AZ.Beating their chests: University students with ADHD demonstrate greater attentional abilities on an inattentional blindness paradigm.Neuropsychology. 2015;29(6):882-887. doi:10.1037/neu0000189Horwood S, Beanland V.Inattentional blindness in older adults: Effects of attentional set and to-be-ignored distractors.Atten Percept Psychophys. 2016;78(3):818-828. doi:10.3758/s13414-015-1057-4Saryazdi R, Bak K, Campos JL.Inattentional blindness during driving in younger and older adults.Front Psychol. 2019;10:880. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00880Ekelund M, Fernsund H, Karlsson S, Mac Giolla E.Does expertise reduce rates of inattentional blindness? A meta-analysis.Perception. 2022;51(2):131-147. doi:10.1177/03010066211072466Additional ReadingSmithsonian Magazine.But did you see the gorilla? The problem with inattentional blindness.
10 Sources
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.National Safety Council.Understanding distracted driving and inattentional blindness.Rock I, Mack A.Inattentional Blindness. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1998.Wright TJ, Roque NA, Boot WR, Stothart C.Attention capture, processing speed, and inattentional blindness.Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018;190:72-77. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.07.005Simons DJ, Chabris CF.Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.Perception. 1999;28(9):1059-1074. doi:10.1068/p281059Wood K, Simons DJ.Processing without noticing in inattentional blindness: A replication of Moore and Egeth (1997) and Mack and Rock (1998).Atten Percept Psychophys. 2019;81(1):1-11. doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1629-1American Psychological Association.Sights unseen.Grossman ES, Hoffman YSG, Berger I, Zivotofsky AZ.Beating their chests: University students with ADHD demonstrate greater attentional abilities on an inattentional blindness paradigm.Neuropsychology. 2015;29(6):882-887. doi:10.1037/neu0000189Horwood S, Beanland V.Inattentional blindness in older adults: Effects of attentional set and to-be-ignored distractors.Atten Percept Psychophys. 2016;78(3):818-828. doi:10.3758/s13414-015-1057-4Saryazdi R, Bak K, Campos JL.Inattentional blindness during driving in younger and older adults.Front Psychol. 2019;10:880. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00880Ekelund M, Fernsund H, Karlsson S, Mac Giolla E.Does expertise reduce rates of inattentional blindness? A meta-analysis.Perception. 2022;51(2):131-147. doi:10.1177/03010066211072466Additional ReadingSmithsonian Magazine.But did you see the gorilla? The problem with inattentional blindness.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
National Safety Council.Understanding distracted driving and inattentional blindness.Rock I, Mack A.Inattentional Blindness. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1998.Wright TJ, Roque NA, Boot WR, Stothart C.Attention capture, processing speed, and inattentional blindness.Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018;190:72-77. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.07.005Simons DJ, Chabris CF.Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.Perception. 1999;28(9):1059-1074. doi:10.1068/p281059Wood K, Simons DJ.Processing without noticing in inattentional blindness: A replication of Moore and Egeth (1997) and Mack and Rock (1998).Atten Percept Psychophys. 2019;81(1):1-11. doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1629-1American Psychological Association.Sights unseen.Grossman ES, Hoffman YSG, Berger I, Zivotofsky AZ.Beating their chests: University students with ADHD demonstrate greater attentional abilities on an inattentional blindness paradigm.Neuropsychology. 2015;29(6):882-887. doi:10.1037/neu0000189Horwood S, Beanland V.Inattentional blindness in older adults: Effects of attentional set and to-be-ignored distractors.Atten Percept Psychophys. 2016;78(3):818-828. doi:10.3758/s13414-015-1057-4Saryazdi R, Bak K, Campos JL.Inattentional blindness during driving in younger and older adults.Front Psychol. 2019;10:880. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00880Ekelund M, Fernsund H, Karlsson S, Mac Giolla E.Does expertise reduce rates of inattentional blindness? A meta-analysis.Perception. 2022;51(2):131-147. doi:10.1177/03010066211072466
National Safety Council.Understanding distracted driving and inattentional blindness.
Rock I, Mack A.Inattentional Blindness. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1998.
Wright TJ, Roque NA, Boot WR, Stothart C.Attention capture, processing speed, and inattentional blindness.Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018;190:72-77. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.07.005
Simons DJ, Chabris CF.Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.Perception. 1999;28(9):1059-1074. doi:10.1068/p281059
Wood K, Simons DJ.Processing without noticing in inattentional blindness: A replication of Moore and Egeth (1997) and Mack and Rock (1998).Atten Percept Psychophys. 2019;81(1):1-11. doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1629-1
American Psychological Association.Sights unseen.
Grossman ES, Hoffman YSG, Berger I, Zivotofsky AZ.Beating their chests: University students with ADHD demonstrate greater attentional abilities on an inattentional blindness paradigm.Neuropsychology. 2015;29(6):882-887. doi:10.1037/neu0000189
Horwood S, Beanland V.Inattentional blindness in older adults: Effects of attentional set and to-be-ignored distractors.Atten Percept Psychophys. 2016;78(3):818-828. doi:10.3758/s13414-015-1057-4
Saryazdi R, Bak K, Campos JL.Inattentional blindness during driving in younger and older adults.Front Psychol. 2019;10:880. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00880
Ekelund M, Fernsund H, Karlsson S, Mac Giolla E.Does expertise reduce rates of inattentional blindness? A meta-analysis.Perception. 2022;51(2):131-147. doi:10.1177/03010066211072466
Smithsonian Magazine.But did you see the gorilla? The problem with inattentional blindness.
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