Inattentional Blindness Research Articles

IEyeGASE: An Intelligent Eye Gaze-Based Assessment System for Deeper Insights into Learner Performance.

In the current education environment, learning takes place outside the physical classroom, and tutors need to determine whether learners are absorbing the content delivered to them. Online assessment has become a viable option for tutors to establish the achievement of course learning outcomes by learners. It provides real-time progress and immediate results; however, it has challenges in quantifying learner aspects like wavering behavior, confidence level, knowledge acquired, quickness in completing the task, task engagement, inattentional blindness to critical information, etc. An intelligent eye gaze-based assessment system called IEyeGASE is developed to measure insights into these behavioral aspects of learners. The system can be integrated into the existing online assessment system and help tutors re-calibrate learning goals and provide necessary corrective actions.

What we’ve been missing about what we’ve been missing: Above-chance sensitivity to inattentional blindness stimuli

Inattentional blindness—the failure to report clearly visible stimuli when attention is otherwise engaged—is among the most striking and well-known phenomena in psychology. But does inattention really render subjects “blind,” or do they see more than their reports suggest? Standardly, IB studies simply ask subjects whether they noticed anything unusual on the critical trial, treating anyone who says “no” as having failed to perceive the stimulus. Yet this yes/no measure is susceptible to bias. Subjects might respond “no” because they were under-confident whether they saw anything (or whether what they saw counted as unusual), because they doubted that they could identify it, etc. Here, we address this problem by modifying the classic IB paradigm to allow derivation of signal-detection measures of sensitivity and bias. Subjects’ primary task was to report which arm of a briefly presented cross was longer. In Experiments 1 and 2, the last trial included an unexpected stimulus. However, after the traditional yes/no question, subjects also answered a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) question, e.g., “Was the stimulus on the left or right?” or a forced-response question, e.g., “Was the stimulus red or blue?”. We found that subjects who reported not noticing the IB stimulus could nevertheless discriminate its features (e.g., color, location) well above-chance. In Experiment 3, only two-thirds of subjects were shown an unusual stimulus, providing a false-alarm rate with which to derive detection-theoretic statistics. Subjects also provided confidence ratings for their reports, allowing us to construct confidence-based ROC curves. As predicted, yes/no reports were conservatively biased (i.e., subjects tended to say “no”). Sensitivity did not differ significantly across yes/no and 2AFC tasks, suggesting that standard estimates of IB may be inflated by such biases. These results are consistent with a rarely discussed account of IB: Inattention does not abolish awareness; rather, it degrades it.

Individual Differences in Inattentional Blindness in Visual Search

Individual Differences in Inattentional Blindness in Visual Search

Statistical regularity affects inattentional blindness

Statistical regularity affects inattentional blindness

Inattentional blindness in anesthesiology: A gorilla is worth one thousand words.

People are not able to anticipate unexpected events. Inattentional blindness is demonstrated to happen not only in naïve observers engaged in an unfamiliar task but also in field experts with years of training. Anaesthesia is the perfect example of a discipline which requires a high level of attention and our aim was to evaluate if inattentional blindness can affect anesthesiologists during their daily activities. An online survey was distributed on Facebook between May 1, 2021 and May 31, 2021. The survey consisted of five simulated cases with questions investigating the anesthetic management of day-case surgeries. Each case had an introduction, a chest radiography, an electrocardiogram, preoperative blood testing and the last case had a gorilla embedded in the chest radiography. In total 699 respondents from 17 different countries were finally included in the analysis. The main outcome was to assess the incidence of inattentional blindness. Only 34 (4.9%) respondents were able to spot the gorilla. No differences were found between anesthesiologists or residents, private or public hospitals, or between medical doctors with different experience. Our findings assess that inattentional blindness is common in anesthesia, and ever-growing attention is deemed necessary to improve patient safety; to achieve this objective several strategies should be adopted such as an increased use of standardized protocols, promoting automation based strategies to reduce human error when performing repetitive tasks and discouraging evaluation of multiple consecutive patients in the same work shifts independently of the associated complexity.

In plane sight: Inattentional blindness affects visual detection of external targets in simulated flight

Aviation places significant demands on pilots' perceptual and attentional capacities. The avoidance of other objects both on the ground and in the air is critical to safe flight. Research on automobile driving has revealed the occurrence of ‘inattentional blindness’ (IB) whereby objects clearly located within the visual field may not detected when drivers are concurrently engaged in another attention capturing task such as a cellphone conversation. Almost no comparable research has been conducted within the aviation domain despite the significance of both ground-based and mid-air collisions. The present study was designed to investigate the effects of diverting attentional resources away from the primary task of safely flying a simulated light aircraft from takeoff to cruising. Flight naïve students were trained to proficiency in a flight-simulator and flew two simulated flights with and without a competing attentional task. Detection of a variety of objects placed in the background was measured. The results showed that when distracted by an engaging cellphone conversation novice pilots failed to detect many of the objects located within the visual scene. Recognition accuracy was greater when pilots' attention was not diverted elsewhere. There was a reduction in time spent looking at some key flight instruments but not on others. Inattentional blindness poses significant flight safety risks and further research into both the stimulus and perceiver characteristics that promote or reduce inattentional blindness would be of significant benefit to aviation safety.

Inattentional Blindness in Augmented Reality Head-Up Display-Assisted Driving

ABSTRACT Augmented reality head-up display (AR HUD) is a new technology in assisted driving, which can add extra information to the driving environment in real-time to help the driver better perceive road situation. AR HUD can enhance driving safety but may also encourage inattentional blindness. Hence, this study aims to examine whether AR HUD-induces inattentional blindness and determine whether workload intensifies their relationship. In experiment 1, 60 participants were randomly assigned to three groups and watched three types of augmented reality (AR)-augmented driving videos, respectively. They were instructed to respond to any critical events, but only their responses to road-crossing pedestrians were recorded. Results show that AR HUD reduces inattentional blindness when pedestrians are augmented but encourages inattentional blindness when pedestrians are not augmented. In experiment 2, 20 participants viewed AR-augmented driving videos of high and low workloads. Pedestrians were not augmented in all videos. Result reveals that a high workload induces more inattentional blindness than low workload. The finding confirms that AR HUD induces inattentional blindness, and a high workload will intensify this relationship. The future design of the AR HUD assisted-driving system should consider the risk of inattentional blindness and come up with corresponding countermeasures.

Perceptual load and enumeration: Distractor interference depends on subitizing capacity.

Attention is limited, both in processing capacity (leading to phenomena of "inattentional blindness") and in the capacity for selective focus (leading to distraction). Load theory (e.g., Lavie, 1995) accounts for both limitations by proposing that perceptual processing has limited capacity but proceeds automatically and in parallel on all stimuli within capacity. Here we tested these claims by applying load theory to the phenomenon of "subitizing": the parallel detection and individuation of a limited number of items, established in enumeration research. We predicted that distractor interference will be found within but not beyond a person's subitizing capacity (measured as the transition from parallel to serial slope). Participants reported the number of target shapes from brief displays while ignoring irrelevant cartoon-image distractors. As predicted, distractor cost on enumeration performance was found within subitizing capacity and eliminated in larger set sizes. Moreover, individual differences results demonstrated that distractor effects depended on an individual's capacity (i.e., their serial-to-parallel transition point), rather than on set size per se. These results provide new evidence for the load theory hypotheses that perceptual processing is automatic and parallel within its limited capacity, while extending it to account for selective attention during enumeration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Age differences in Inattentional blindness to emotional stimulus

Age differences in Inattentional blindness to emotional stimulus

Effects of patient deterioration simulation using inattentional blindness for final year nursing students: A randomized controlled trial

BackgroundPatient deterioration should be detected early and responded appropriately for patient safety. It is necessary to strengthen situational awareness regarding patient deterioration. Inattentional blindness is a major factor that hinders situational awareness about patient deterioration in the clinical setting. ObjectivesTo analyze the impact of patient deterioration simulation using inattentional blindness (PDS-IB) on situational awareness and patient safety competency-attitude among final year nursing students. DesignA randomized controlled trial. ParticipantsFinal year nursing students at a university in South Korea. MethodsStudents were randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. The experimental group (n = 47) was given a PDS-IB. The control group (n = 44) received a simple patient deterioration simulation. Situational awareness and patient safety competency-attitude were measured at baseline, post intervention, and at 2 weeks follow-up. Data were analyzed using a two-way repeated measures ANOVA. ResultsThere were statistically significant group effects, time effects, and group and time interaction effects in situational awareness and patient safety competency-attitude. ConclusionPDS-IB is an effective educational strategy that increases situational awareness and patient safety competency-attitude in final year nursing students.

Dissociating the Neural Correlates of Consciousness and Task Relevance in Face Perception Using Simultaneous EEG-fMRI.

Current theories of visual consciousness disagree about whether it emerges during early stages of processing in sensory brain regions or later when a widespread frontoparietal network becomes involved. Moreover, disentangling conscious perception from task-related postperceptual processes (e.g., report) and integrating results across different neuroscientific methods remain ongoing challenges. The present study addressed these problems using simultaneous EEG-fMRI and a specific inattentional blindness paradigm with three physically identical phases in female and male human participants. In phase 1, participants performed a distractor task during which line drawings of faces and control stimuli were presented centrally. While some participants spontaneously noticed the faces in phase 1, others remained inattentionally blind. In phase 2, all participants were made aware of the task-irrelevant faces but continued the distractor task. In phase 3, the faces became task-relevant. Bayesian analysis of brain responses demonstrated that conscious face perception was most strongly associated with activation in fusiform gyrus (fMRI) as well as the N170 and visual awareness negativity (EEG). Smaller awareness effects were revealed in the occipital and prefrontal cortex (fMRI). Task-relevant face processing, on the other hand, led to strong, extensive activation of occipitotemporal, frontoparietal, and attentional networks (fMRI). In EEG, it enhanced early negativities and elicited a pronounced P3b component. Overall, we provide evidence that conscious visual perception is linked with early processing in stimulus-specific sensory brain areas but may additionally involve prefrontal cortex. In contrast, the strong activation of widespread brain networks and the P3b are more likely associated with task-related processes.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How does our brain generate visual consciousness-the subjective experience of what it is like to see, for example, a face? To date, it is hotly debated whether it emerges early in sensory brain regions or later when a widespread frontoparietal network is activated. Here, we use simultaneous fMRI and EEG for high spatial and temporal resolution and demonstrate that conscious face perception is predominantly linked to early and occipitotemporal processes, but also prefrontal activity. Task-related processes (e.g., decision-making), on the other hand, elicit brain-wide activations including late and strong frontoparietal activity. These findings challenge numerous previous studies and highlight the importance of investigating the neural correlates of consciousness in the absence of task relevance.

The problem of the present in West Africa: Introducing a conceptual framework

The practice of anticipation and futures literacy in postcolonial West Africa requires a conceptual framework capable of capturing and articulating recurrent phenomena from the past in the region’s postcolonial present-present. For this purpose, this article theorizes and operationalizes a framework termed the past futures framework (PFF). In this article, past futures are defined as final versions of anticipations that have completely manifested in the present-present, but now exist in the past. The theorization of the PFF builds on the combination of some heuristic principles of historical time, the Futures Literacy Framework (FLF) and the Discipline of Anticipation (DOA). Further, the operationalization of the past futures framework is achieved using the case study of Biafran secessionism in West Africa. Finally, the article argues that a core novelty of the past futures framework lies in its use for revisiting and decolonizing the present, with the aim of mitigating inattentional blindness in foresight practices that sustains conditions for the continual recurrence of past phenomena in the present-present within the region of West Africa.

The Effect of Perceptual-Semantic Blindness in Solving Semantic Problems with Visual Means Containing the Solution

In the light of the Cultural-Historical Theory (L.S. Vygotsky) and the Theory of Transcendental Psychology of Perception (A.I. Mirakyan), the author considers the position and functional role of the perceptual process in the development of the mind of an adult. The hypothesis is that the functional role of perception in the mind of the person at the end of its period of maturation is subordinate to the higher mental functions, in particular, the process of thinking, which is based on the search for a person available memory capacity and the possibility of finding knowledge in the relevant external sources. Therefore, in semantic terms, visual perception can be excluded from a conscious process of finding semantic solutions. This suggests the subordinate function of visual perception in cognitive adult life and the virtually automatic nature of the process that serves the knowledge-based development opportunities. In this context, we presented and experimentally tested on 30 students the effect of perceptual-semantic blindness, which shows that the mental process of solving semantic tasks is in the main ignoring additional visual stimuli containing the solution in the general visual field. In contrast to inattentional blindness, these stimuli are constantly presented in the field of vision and perceptual blindness was due not so much to inattention, but semantic processes. The presented effect of perceptual-semantic blindness is clearly expressed in more than 60% of cases (up to 100% for graphical variants). This situation can be regarded as the result of a kind of sociocultural development, formed in the conditions of modern information technology society. It also points to the need for special and purposeful perceptual-cognitive training as one of the effective means of using unclaimed perceptual possibilities to avoid the phenomena of perceptual-semantic blindness. These means are especially important for the educational process.

Position-Specific Attentional Skills in Team Sports: A Comparison between Defensive and Offensive Football Players

Over the last few decades, technical as well as cognitive skills and their relation to position-specific skill requirements have been extensively investigated as indicators for players’ performance in team sports. To explore the impact of positioning in football on inattentional blindness we employed dynamic tasks that presented an unexpected object and analyzed its noticing rates in three different experiments. In Experiment 1, amateur and expert football players performed a well-established inattentional blindness task of counting the number of times a basketball was passed between two groups while an unexpected, non-sport specific object was introduced to the situation. Noticing rates were higher for strikers compared to players of other playing positions. The findings support a position-specific advantage regarding inattentional blindness for more offensive players compared to more defensive players. Using the same inattentional blindness task, this finding was investigated in Experiment 2 in more detail, i.e., by differentiating between more playing positions. Results revealed that offensive players (in particular strikers) observed unexpected objects more frequently than defensive players. Experiment 3 used a newly developed football-specific task requiring participants to find solutions in different game situations with an unexpected free-standing player appearing in one of these situations. Defensive players again showed more inattentional blindness than offensive players (in particular offensive mid-fielders), i.e., offensive players perceived the unmarked player more often. This indicates that players not only differ in the conscious perception of unexpected objects that are irrelevant to the sport as a function of their playing position, but also show differences when the perception of the unexpected relevant object is useful for finding tactical solutions in a given game situation. Our findings provide further insight into the importance of the definition of position-specific skill requirements in team sports.

Mr. Hulot’s Invisible Gorilla

This article examines the work of mid-century French filmmaker Jacques Tati. Tati suggested that his films allow more visual freedom to audiences and that audiences discover new material upon multiple viewings of his films. We review the scholarship on Tati, especially in relation to critic André Bazin’s theories of realism, and then propose another model for understanding Tati’s films: the psychological concept of inattentional blindness. The article then discusses our experiment using eye tracking technology to study how subjects watch Tati’s films versus other types of cinema and also how they re-watch films. Finally, we applied several statistical and mathematical tests to the eye tracking data to understand key differences between Tati’s films and other filmmaking practices.

Threat-relevant stimuli cannot be better detected by preschoolers in an inattentional blindness task.

Detecting the unexpected threat-relevant stimuli plays a vital role in preschoolers' daily life safety, but a few studies have investigated how preschoolers process this kind of stimuli. We applied a classical inattentional blindness task (designed by Mack and Rock Inattentional blindness. MIT Press, 1998) to explore whether threat-relevant stimuli could be better detected in an inattentional condition and whether the age and the fluid intelligence could predict the incidence of the detection. With the involvement of two hundred and thirty-nine preschoolers (aged from 4 to 6years), we found that it was not more likely for preschoolers to detect the threat-relevant stimuli (Knife and Snake) compared with the non-threat-relevant stimuli (Spoon and Snail). The age difference of detection only occurred in the divided attentional condition, but not in the inattentional condition. Moreover, the group of 5-year-old preschoolers with higher fluid intelligence scores was more likely to detect the unexpected stimuli, but the prediction was not powerful. These findings demonstrate that the threat-superiority effect on IB does not occur on preschoolers and the individual difference of preschoolers' IB is unstable. This study enriches the cognition of young children's attentional bias to threat-relevant stimuli, and has certain significance to understand the essence of children's attentional process.

The Invisible Fraud: The Impact of Inattentional Blindness on Auditor Fraud Detection

ABSTRACT Evidence from major fraud investigations has revealed that auditors often fail to attend to visual fraud cues (i.e., red flags) within substantive testing evidence. Research in psychology on inattentional blindness (IB) provides a theoretical framework to explain why this occurs. Although most forensic research has focused on audit planning, we focus on the detection of visual fraud cues embedded in substantive testing evidence. We examine the impact of two interventions, priming and strategic reasoning, on senior audit associates to determine the extent to which these interventions mitigate IB effects. The results indicate that IB effects hinder auditor visual fraud cue detection during the performance of substantive testing procedures and that priming significantly reduced IB effects. The findings provide important implications for practice by drawing the auditor's attention to these effects and by suggesting priming as an efficient and cost-effective intervention to assist in mitigating IB effects in the auditing environment. Data Availability: Please contact the authors.

1003 A Case of Tunnel-Vision in Upper Renal Tract Imaging: The Invisible Gorilla

Abstract We present an interesting case of a 70-year-old female who presented with haematuria on the suspected cancer pathway. Renal ultrasound showed a vascular renal mass on her right kidney measuring 8x7cm with an unremarkable left kidney. She underwent a laparoscopic radical nephrectomy following confirmation of an 8cm renal mass in the right kidney on the contrasted staging CT scan with a repeat review at the multidisciplinary meeting. Post-operatively a subsequent review of the pre-operative CT and ultrasound scan, showed an incidental large left(contralateral) upper quadrant retroperitoneal fatty mass sized 15x10cm, displacing the stomach and spleen. Further investigation in the form of an MRI Abdomen excluded features of a liposarcoma, resulting in the diagnosis of a large retroperitoneal lipoma. This case highlights the significance of selective attention in imaging interpretation. We believe this to be a prime example of the level of meticulousness required as fat-rich tissues have low attenuation on CT-scans, which can be easily missed out. A cautious multi-clinician interpretation of scans should be performed to avoid missing potentially sinister pathology which would impact patient care dramatically. This case has led to more thorough review of future pre-operative imaging by the operating surgical team.

PRIMING EFFECTS FOR THE UNEXPECTED STIMULUS IN INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS

Studies on inattentional blindness demonstrate that a stimulus that unexpectedly appears in the visual environment may be undetected when attention is engaged in a task. The stimulus can still be processed and remembered at the perceptual and semantic level. The question of whether this is still the case when there are items to be ignored in the visual environment remains. In the present study investigating this question, participants attended to furniture pictures while they ignored other pictures. In the inattention trial, an unexpected word appeared in the middle of the circular display. Participants blind to the word were compared to ones who were not exposed to the word. In Experiment 1, participants were more likely to complete a word fragment with this word than the ones who were not exposed to the word. In Experiment 2, participants were more likely to choose the picture of this word than the ones who were not exposed to the word. These studies show that the undetected unexpected stimulus is processed at the perceptual and semantic level and produces priming effects on a subsequent task. Findings were discussed with regards to the possible memory correlates of undetected visual information and levels of consciousness. Keywords: inattentional blindness, priming, consciousness, perceptual processing, semantic processing

The Dynamic and Fragile Nature of Eyewitness Memory Formation: Considering Stress and Attention.

Eyewitnesses are often susceptible to recollection failures and memory distortions. These failures and distortions are influenced by several factors. The present review will discuss two such important factors, attention failures and stress. We argue that acute stress, often experienced by eyewitnesses and victims of crimes, directly influences attentional processes, which likely has downstream consequences for memory. Attentional failures may result in individuals missing something unusual or important in a complex visual field. Amongst eyewitnesses, this can lead to individuals missing details, even unusual or important central details, regarding the crime. Surprisingly, few studies have investigated attentional failures in eyewitness scenarios, and none have investigated the relationship between stress, attention, and witness memory. This review will discuss the impact of attentional failures, mainly those resulting from inattentional blindness, in applied contexts in order to bridge to eyewitness scenarios. In addition, we will integrate the applied literature on attentional failures with literature that examines the influences of arousal and stress on attention. We will conclude by presenting how future research may tease apart the independent contributions of arousal and stress on attentional failures and successes and how this research may inform understanding of eyewitness reliability.