Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 19, Issue 4, December 2010, Pages 1102-1104
Consciousness and Cognition

Commentary
What’s “inattentional” about inattentional blindness?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.01.011Get rights and content

Abstract

In a recent commentary, Memmert critiqued claims that attentional misdirection is directly analogous to inattentional blindness (IB) and cautioned against assuming too close a similarity between the two phenomena. One important difference highlighted in his analysis is that most lab-based inductions of IB rely on the taxing of attention through a demanding primary task, whereas attentional misdirection typically involves simply the orchestration of spatial attention. The present commentary argues that, rather than reflecting a complete dissociation between IB and attentional misdirection, this difference highlights potential grounds for delineating mechanistically distinct forms of IB: spatial inattentional blindness, which stems from the covert misallocation of spatial attention, and central inattentional blindness, which stems from disruption or preoccupation of perceptual mechanisms that interface with higher-level processes such as working memory. Recognition of such distinctions can help situate theoretical understanding of IB more firmly within the context of the broader attention literature.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dan Simons and Adam Grant for feedback on early drafts of this manuscript.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Commentary on Memmert, D. (2010). The gap between inattentional blindness and attentional misdirection. Consciousness and Cognition, 19, 1097–1101.

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