What is Inattentional Blindness?

Can You Spot the Gorilla?

Inattentional Blindness is a phenomenon where there is a visual failure due to not attending to a fully-visible object even if we are looking directly at it. It is the missing of an object right in front of our eyes due to the lack of attention to it. In other words, it's being unaware of clearly visible stimuli when not directing attention to that stimulus (Goldstein, E. B. 2013). This occurs when we fail to perceive an unanticipated stimulus that is at our plain sight.

How does Inattentional Blindness Affect Visual Perception?

The failure to notice unexpected objects when our attention is preoccupied affects perception because our attention determines our perception. Perception determines thoughtful practical solutions as well as it contributes to understanding and eliminating errors. Our perception affected by inattentional blindness can result in incidents such as road crashes. A person performing a task fails to see what should have been clearly visible causing a task to result in errors, incidents, and even accidents. Inattentional blindness can result in a non-cognizant perception. For example, displays of inattentional blindness have usually included observers tangled in an unfamiliar task. However; demonstrations have also included skillful searchers who have spent years refining their capacity to distinguish small anomalies in detailed images such as radiologists. 24 radiologists assigned to conduct a familiar lung-nodule detection task where a gorilla (48 times the size of the average nodule) was implanted in the last image that was presented to them. The gorilla went unnoticed by eighty-three percent of the radiologists. Eye tracking demonstrated that most missed the gorilla even when they had looked directly at its location. Hence, even expert searchers are vulnerable to inattentional blindness (Drew, Võ, Wolfe, 2013).

References:

Beanland, V., & Chan, E. H. C. (2016). The relationship between sustained inattentional blindness and working memory capacity. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78(3), 808-817. doi:10.3758/s13414-015-1027-x

Drew, T., Võ, M. L. -., & Wolfe, J. M. (2013). The invisible gorilla strikes again: Sustained inattentional blindness in expert observers. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1848-1853. doi:10.1177/0956797613479386

Goldstein, E. B. (2013). Sensation and Perception (9th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection Database.