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UrduAccording to Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor at New York University, there has been a long-standing belief that when we are highly focused on something important, such as driving or playing a game, we tend to miss unexpected objects that suddenly appear in our field of vision, even if they are clearly visible and moving. However, their study challenges this notion by demonstrating that people can actually notice unexpected objects that are moving rapidly while they are engaged in a task. However, the research also confirms that we are less effective at detecting these same objects when they are moving slowly. The study’s findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research team, consisting of Wayne Mackey, Michael Karlovich, and David Heeger, focused their study on a phenomenon called “inattentional blindness.” This term refers to the inability to perceive unexpected objects when our attention is concentrated on a specific task. The team examined this phenomenon in relation to the well-known “invisible gorilla experiment” from the 1990s. In that experiment, participants watching a video of students passing basketballs failed to notice a person dressed in a gorilla costume who appeared unexpectedly. This oversight occurred because the participants were already engaged in counting the number of passes made by players wearing white shirts. The study aimed to delve deeper into the concept of inattentional blindness and its effects on our perception of unexpected objects.
This and similar studies characterized one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology—inattentional blindness—as an inevitable flip side of task focusing, and essentially a deficit.
The research team from New York University conducted a series of experiments as part of their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their objective was to gain a deeper understanding of inattentional blindness and to investigate whether our cognitive processing is as restricted as previous research had indicated. By designing and implementing these experiments, the team aimed to shed light on the true extent of our cognitive limitations when it comes to perceiving unexpected objects while focused on a specific task.
They replicated the invisible gorilla experiment using more than 1,500 of research participants—but including several new conditions. In the original 1999 experiment, the gorilla moved slowly as well as upright—like a human (which it was!).
The research team from New York University conducted a series of experiments as part of their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their objective was to gain a deeper understanding of inattentional blindness and to investigate whether our cognitive processing is as restricted as previous research had indicated. By designing and implementing these experiments, the team aimed to shed light on the true extent of our cognitive limitations when it comes to perceiving unexpected objects while focused on a specific task.
A video of the experiment may be viewed here.
The findings of the study revealed that participants, who were occupied with the pass-counting task, had a higher likelihood of noticing the gorilla introduced by the NYU research team. The chances of spotting the gorilla increased when it moved significantly faster than in the original 1999 experiment or when it exhibited leaping movements instead of walking. These results suggest that the speed and distinctive motion of unexpected objects play a crucial role in our ability to detect them while focused on a particular task.
To validate the generalizability of their findings beyond the specific context of spotting gorillas, the researchers carried out additional experiments with around 3,000 participants. These experiments replicated the core principles of the original invisible gorilla study. Participants were instructed to count the number of dots of a particular color that moved randomly across a central line on the screen. Meanwhile, an unexpected moving object (UMO), represented by a triangle, appeared and moved at different speeds across the screen. These experiments aimed to examine whether participants could detect the UMO under various speed conditions, further exploring the phenomenon of inattentional blindness.
Similar to the findings in the gorilla study, participants in the experiments were more likely to notice the triangle when it was moving at a faster speed. Interestingly, this pattern did not hold true for triangles that moved slower than the dots, despite the slower-moving triangles being visible on the screen for a longer duration. This observation is significant because it rules out the possibility that the higher detectability of fast-moving unexpected objects (UMOs) is solely attributed to their physical dissimilarity to the task-related dots. The authors of the paper emphasize this point, underscoring the implications of their findings.
“(O)ur findings…contribute to the ongoing debate on the impact of physical salience on inattentional blindness, suggesting that it is fast speeds specifically, not the physical salience of a feature more generally, that captures attention.”
The findings of the study may have evolutionary implications. According to the classical view of inattentional blindness, being focused on a specific task could leave an organism vulnerable to unexpected threats. However, the results of the study published in PNAS propose an alternative perspective. They suggest the existence of a “sentinel” system in organisms that continuously monitors the environment and alerts them to potential threats, particularly fast-moving attacking predators. This implies that our cognitive processes are designed to prioritize the detection of such threats, even when our attention is engaged in other tasks.
“Fast-moving, unexpected objects seem to override the task focus of an organism,” says Wallisch. “This will allow it to notice and react to the new potential threat, improving chances of survival.”
The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DGE 1342536).
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