Cognitive Psychology - Inattentional Blindness Notes

Inattentional Blindness:

DEFINITION:
Mack and Rock (1998)
 Individuals do not always acknowledge certain stimuli if their attention is
diverted and they become preoccupied with another task. This is known as
inattentional blindness


RESEARCH:
Simon and Chabris (1999)
 Presented participants with a video of people playing basketball. The
participants’ task was to count the number of times the basketball was
passed between the group of people.
- One of the actors in the video was dressed as a gorilla and walked past the
game of basketball, paused and then beat his chest.
- However, it was found that only 46% of participants noticed the gorilla
- Therefore, this was known as inattentional blindness as many of the
participants failed to notice the gorilla as their attention was focused on
counting the number of basketball passes.

Other factors contribute to inattentional blindness:

Clifasefi, Takarangi and Bergman (2006)
 Found that intoxicated individuals were more likely to experience
inattentional blindness compared to sober individuals.
 Also, individuals who suffer from autism are less likely to experience
inattentional blindness. Therefore this suggests that the mental and
cognitive abilities in individuals can influence an individual’s susceptibility to
inattentional blindness




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