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Let's start with a simple question.
If I ask you, "do you see with your eyes open?", the answer is obviously yes. But let's tweak the question a bit "do you see everything with your eyes open?" If your answer is still yes, think again.
Attention plays a key role psychologically in the visual perception of the world around us. This is the reason why, for instance, we often do not notice the bloopers even in our favorite shows unless someone points them out. As a tech lover, the easiest analogy I can think of is this: imagine the images your eyes capture similar to those taken in a portrait mode on your phone, where the background is blurred to focus on the person at the center of the frame. When we concentrate particularly on one main object or person, we might leave small changes or obstacles entering our visual field unnoticed.
The term 'Inattentional Blindness (IB)' was coined by the PhD psychologists Dr. Arien Mack and Dr. Irvin Rock who observed this pattern during their experiment and explained it in their book under the same name.
One of the most common experiments is the 'Invisible Gorilla' where the audience is asked to watch a video of two teams playing basketball and track the number of passes one of the team makes. Afterwards, they are questioned on whether there was anything unusual about the video and more than 50% answer in the negative.
However, there really is something rather odd. At some points in the video, a man dressed in a gorilla suit came in the frame, thumped his chest and strolled away.
Seems impossible to miss something like that, doesn't it? But because of the focus being demanded by one major task, the gorilla basically became 'invisible' to the brain.
Hard to believe? Here are some common day-to-day scenarios where we face the exact same phenomenon:
-LBFTS crashes: when the driver is directing his/her attention to one task such as texting, some objects may become invisible in plain sight, leading to accidents. This has a special name, LBFTS crashes which stands for Looked But Failed To See.
-Tripping: this may seem like a simple example but it is a surprisingly common one too. Remember the last time you were walking to work while revising notes for an important meeting and tripped? Your brain was so focused on one task that it missed seeing the ditch or banana peel you tripped over.
-Magic shows: It's true a magician never reveals his secrets. But this blog discovers the key ingredient in their magic pots. When the magician plays a trick, say a one where you are asked to pick a card, your concentrated focus on that one card makes it easier for the magician to slip in or shuffle the other cards and build on to the trick.
Finally, there are a lot of other everyday examples, but I believe the best way to learn is through trying it yourself. So click here to be to part a mindboggling experiment, also used as an ad in the UK to promote awareness on 'invisible' cyclists and LBFTS crashes.
Stay tuned for more content :)
Thank you.