Inattentional Blindness and Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities.

Carina Kreitz,Daniel J Simons,Philip Furley,Daniel Memmert,Michael J Proulx

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134675

Carina Kreitz, Daniel J Simons + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134675

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Abstract

People sometimes fail to notice salient unexpected objects when their attention is otherwise occupied, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. To explore individual differences in inattentional blindness, we employed both static and dynamic tasks that either presented the unexpected object away from the focus of attention (spatial) or near the focus of attention (central). We hypothesized that noticing in central tasks might be driven by the availability of cognitive resources like working memory, and that noticing in spatial tasks might be driven by the limits on spatial attention like attention breadth. However, none of the cognitive measures predicted noticing in the dynamic central task or in either the static or dynamic spatial task. Only in the central static task did working memory capacity predict noticing, and that relationship was fairly weak. Furthermore, whether or not participants noticed an unexpected object in a static task was only weakly associated with their odds of noticing an unexpected object in a dynamic task. Taken together, our results are largely consistent with the notion that noticing unexpected objects is driven more by stochastic processes common to all people than by stable individual differences in cognitive abilities.

Highlights

When their attention is otherwise engaged, people sometimes fail to notice a salient and fully visible, but unexpected object or event, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness
We hypothesized that noticing in central tasks might be driven by the availability of cognitive resources like working memory, and that noticing in spatial tasks might be driven by the limits on spatial attention like attention breadth
Data were missing for some participants in some tasks

Summary

Introduction

When their attention is otherwise engaged, people sometimes fail to notice a salient and fully visible, but unexpected object or event, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness can be viewed as a byproduct of attentional selection: Our ability to focus attention enables us to ignore irrelevant or distracting information, but it occasionally leads us to miss items that we might have wanted to experience [1,2,3,4]. The primary-task demands (i.e. current cognitive load; [4,11]) and top-down factors like the observer’s goals or attentional set [12,13,14] contribute to inattentional blindness. Many aspects of the situation affect noticing, it is less clear whether some people are more prone to inattentional blindness than others. Establishing stable individual differences in performance requires repeated tests of the same participants on the same task

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