TY - JOUR
T1 - How not to be seen
T2 - The contribution of similarity and selective ignoring to sustained inattentional blindness
AU - Most, Steven B.
AU - Simons, Daniel J.
AU - Scholl, Brian J.
AU - Jimenez, Rachel
AU - Clifford, Erin
AU - Chabris, Christopher F.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Danielle Hobeika, Jason Freidenfelds, and Beata Ziolkowska for helping collect data; Adriane Seiffert and Arni Kristjansson for informative discussions; and Jim Enns, Ray Klein, Ron Rensink, and an anonymous reviewer for many helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier version of this article. We also thank M. Python for inspiring the title. Daniel J. Simons was supported by a Sloan Research Fellowship and by a grant from the Clarke/Cooke fund at Harvard University. Brian Scholl was supported by Grant No. F32-MH12 483–01 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
PY - 2001/1
Y1 - 2001/1
N2 - When people attend to objects or events in a visual display, they often fail to notice an additional, unexpected, but fully visible object or event in the same display. This phenomenon is now known as inattentional blindness. We present a new approach to the study of sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events in order to explore the roles of similarity, distinctiveness, and attentional set in the detection of unexpected objects. In Experiment 1, we found that the similarity of an unexpected object to other objects in the display influences attentional capture: The more similar an unexpected object is to the attended items, and the greater its difference from the ignored items, the more likely it is that people will notice it. Experiment 2 explored whether this effect of similarity is driven by selective ignoring of irrelevant items or by selective focusing on attended items. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the distinctiveness of the unexpected object alone cannot entirely account for the similarity effects found in the first two experiments: when attending to black items or white items in a dynamic display, nearly 30% of observers failed to notice a bright red cross move across the display, even though it had a unique color, luminance, shape, and motion trajectory and was visible for 5 s. Together, the results suggest that inattentional blindness for ongoing dynamic events depends both on the similarity of the unexpected object to the other objects in the display and on the observer's attentional set.
AB - When people attend to objects or events in a visual display, they often fail to notice an additional, unexpected, but fully visible object or event in the same display. This phenomenon is now known as inattentional blindness. We present a new approach to the study of sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events in order to explore the roles of similarity, distinctiveness, and attentional set in the detection of unexpected objects. In Experiment 1, we found that the similarity of an unexpected object to other objects in the display influences attentional capture: The more similar an unexpected object is to the attended items, and the greater its difference from the ignored items, the more likely it is that people will notice it. Experiment 2 explored whether this effect of similarity is driven by selective ignoring of irrelevant items or by selective focusing on attended items. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the distinctiveness of the unexpected object alone cannot entirely account for the similarity effects found in the first two experiments: when attending to black items or white items in a dynamic display, nearly 30% of observers failed to notice a bright red cross move across the display, even though it had a unique color, luminance, shape, and motion trajectory and was visible for 5 s. Together, the results suggest that inattentional blindness for ongoing dynamic events depends both on the similarity of the unexpected object to the other objects in the display and on the observer's attentional set.
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U2 - 10.1111/1467-9280.00303
DO - 10.1111/1467-9280.00303
M3 - Article
C2 - 11294235
AN - SCOPUS:0035222341
SN - 0956-7976
VL - 12
SP - 9
EP - 17
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
IS - 1
ER -