INATTENTIONAL
BLINDNESS
For my sensation/perception phenomenon this week
I choose Inattentional Blindness. This is a problem with selection of attention
by all human beings, when we attend certain items in our vision, and this
attending, leads to the exclusion, (blindness), of other items in the same field
of view. This can be clearly understood by an example reported in a Scientific
American podcast done by researchers:
“Researchers had individuals "chase" a "runner" for on a college
campus at night. The subjects followed the runner at a distance
of 30 feet and had to count the number of times he touched his
head. Each chase passed a staged fight designed to look like
the scene Conley rushed by: two actors staged a beat
down on a third man, with kicking, punching and yelling,
and two-thirds of the subjects did not recall seeing the fake fight.
Even when repeated during the day, only 60 percent saw the
beating” (http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=police-officer-runs-past-a-brutal-b-11-06-11)
Why did the people following the “runner” not see
the staged fights? It was because they were not paying attention to all they
were seeing, they were concentrating on how many times the person tapped his
head. This ability to attend certain items, and be totally unaware of others all
in the same field of view, is Inattentional Blindness. It is a very important
ability for us, as the eye takes in so much data, if we attempted to attend to
it all at the same time, our processing centers in the brain would be
overloaded, and cognition could not be obtained. The ability to mentally decide
what to attend, is like a filter, ensuring only wanted data is sensed when we
need it to be, thus we can pick what we attend to, but we cannot pick what we
exclude:
“To cope with the problem, we have evolved a mechanism called attention, which acts as a
filter that quickly examines sensory input and selects a small percentage for
full processing and for conscious perception. The remaining information is lost,
unnoticed and unremembered - we are inattentionally blind to it since it never
reached consciousness. This all happens without our awareness, so it is not a
behavior which people can bring under conscious control.” ("Inattentional
Blindness" & Conspicuity, Green m,
http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/inattentionalblindness.html)
One of the problems with eye witnesses, who have
seen a crime, is that they were not expecting to see a crime. Thus as Green
shows us, they did not attend the crime as it was occurring. Police officers and
lawyers are very aware of this, as are judges. Police officers themselves also
fall prey to this normal exclusion of data. An example of this is the case of a
ticket courtroom where the policeman is summoned to court a few months later
after the offense. Only the officer and the person who received the ticket were
at the crime scene when the offense
occurred:
“Bordeaux, fighting a traffic ticket, hired Christianson
to represent him. Months later, when the matter was called to trial,
Christianson answered for Bordeaux and started questioning the
officer:
When the case started, the sole witness was Officer
Coronado, who had ticketed Bordreaux. While Officer Coronado was on the stand,
Mr. Christianson asked him:
‘And what was I wearing?’
‘Had I cut off my beard that
day?’
‘Was I wearing a beard that day?’
‘I am the driver?’
After Officer Coronado identified Mr. Christianson as the
person he had ticketed that day, Mr. Christianson revealed that he was actually
the lawyer!”
(http://steigerlaw.typepad.com/los_angeles_personal_inju/courtroom_etiquette/index.html)
Thus we can see that seeing; is not always
believing, and believing what we see, is not always true, due to Inattentional
Blindness. The officer was so attentive on writing the ticket, and getting that
information correct, he never saw who he gave the ticket to, as that was not
the focus of his attention.
BLINDNESS
For my sensation/perception phenomenon this week
I choose Inattentional Blindness. This is a problem with selection of attention
by all human beings, when we attend certain items in our vision, and this
attending, leads to the exclusion, (blindness), of other items in the same field
of view. This can be clearly understood by an example reported in a Scientific
American podcast done by researchers:
“Researchers had individuals "chase" a "runner" for on a college
campus at night. The subjects followed the runner at a distance
of 30 feet and had to count the number of times he touched his
head. Each chase passed a staged fight designed to look like
the scene Conley rushed by: two actors staged a beat
down on a third man, with kicking, punching and yelling,
and two-thirds of the subjects did not recall seeing the fake fight.
Even when repeated during the day, only 60 percent saw the
beating” (http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=police-officer-runs-past-a-brutal-b-11-06-11)
Why did the people following the “runner” not see
the staged fights? It was because they were not paying attention to all they
were seeing, they were concentrating on how many times the person tapped his
head. This ability to attend certain items, and be totally unaware of others all
in the same field of view, is Inattentional Blindness. It is a very important
ability for us, as the eye takes in so much data, if we attempted to attend to
it all at the same time, our processing centers in the brain would be
overloaded, and cognition could not be obtained. The ability to mentally decide
what to attend, is like a filter, ensuring only wanted data is sensed when we
need it to be, thus we can pick what we attend to, but we cannot pick what we
exclude:
“To cope with the problem, we have evolved a mechanism called attention, which acts as a
filter that quickly examines sensory input and selects a small percentage for
full processing and for conscious perception. The remaining information is lost,
unnoticed and unremembered - we are inattentionally blind to it since it never
reached consciousness. This all happens without our awareness, so it is not a
behavior which people can bring under conscious control.” ("Inattentional
Blindness" & Conspicuity, Green m,
http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/inattentionalblindness.html)
One of the problems with eye witnesses, who have
seen a crime, is that they were not expecting to see a crime. Thus as Green
shows us, they did not attend the crime as it was occurring. Police officers and
lawyers are very aware of this, as are judges. Police officers themselves also
fall prey to this normal exclusion of data. An example of this is the case of a
ticket courtroom where the policeman is summoned to court a few months later
after the offense. Only the officer and the person who received the ticket were
at the crime scene when the offense
occurred:
“Bordeaux, fighting a traffic ticket, hired Christianson
to represent him. Months later, when the matter was called to trial,
Christianson answered for Bordeaux and started questioning the
officer:
When the case started, the sole witness was Officer
Coronado, who had ticketed Bordreaux. While Officer Coronado was on the stand,
Mr. Christianson asked him:
‘And what was I wearing?’
‘Had I cut off my beard that
day?’
‘Was I wearing a beard that day?’
‘I am the driver?’
After Officer Coronado identified Mr. Christianson as the
person he had ticketed that day, Mr. Christianson revealed that he was actually
the lawyer!”
(http://steigerlaw.typepad.com/los_angeles_personal_inju/courtroom_etiquette/index.html)
Thus we can see that seeing; is not always
believing, and believing what we see, is not always true, due to Inattentional
Blindness. The officer was so attentive on writing the ticket, and getting that
information correct, he never saw who he gave the ticket to, as that was not
the focus of his attention.