Does a Head-Mounted Display Worsen Inattentional Blindness?

Abstract

Head mounted displays (HMDs) can present visual information to operators at times when this would otherwise be difficult or impossible using standard visual displays. HMDs have been shown to benefit anesthetists in simulated medical environments. Operators, however, may have trouble extracting information from the HMD in dynamic environments. Operators may also fail to consciously perceive visual events that are important, meaningful, or bizarre if attending to other aspects of the visual scene. We investigated how attention manipulations (Focused, Divided, Just Watch) interact with display type (HMD, Standard Display) and found that participants were less likely to detect unexpected events using the HMD. We also found that unexpected event detection decreased from the Just Watch to Divided to Focused attention conditions. We suggest further testing be taken to ensure that HMDs to not result in failures to detect unexpected events in anesthesia monitoring.