VL9 when attention fails

• people throwing around basketball

• attention on basketball —> do not see gorilla

• when attention is on one event, we are blind to other big changes

• task: report longer arm of cross

• if an object was inserted near the cross on the 3rd or 4th trial: people could not name the object near the cross

• as filter

• as an attenuator

• as limited resource

—> decides what passes the bottleneck —> serves as gatekeeper to awareness

• distraction through demanding primary task

• target object is not task relevant

• target appearance is unexpected

• target location is previously unknown (attentional guidance would be required to detect it)

• several competing/distracting objects are displayed

• everyday task

• there are usually distractors

• restricted amount of attention is available —> is guided by prior knowledge

• non-selective pathway guides selective pathway and saves about 80% of time

  • lets you limit your search space

  • orientation through features, colors

• semantic guidance —> knowing what objects should be in this scene -> (ventral)

• syntactic guidance —> where should objects be (dorsal)

• ecological validity is important in these studies! for applied visual search

• expertise in primary task reduces inattentional blindness

  —> search tasks require less attentional resources compared to novices

  —> but effects are small

  —> Inattentional blindness benefits from unexpected visual appearance —> recognition errors

• 24 radiologists 25 controls

• 3 min to detect lung nodules in 5 chest CTs

• eye movements tracked

• gorilla in one scan

  • black gorilla, but target white

  • big gorilla, but target small

• 83% of radiologists miss gorilla but less vulnerable to inattentional blindness than novices

• no difference in eye movements —> attention interpretation correct

• in rapid serial visual presentation

  • many objects in short period of time (ca. 100ms)

  • two targets hidden

  • varied stimulus onset asynchrony

  • if target no. 2 too close to 1st —> attention already dedicated

  • interference from initial target t1

  MAX Effect with stimulus onset asynchrony of 200-400 ms