Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Transient Signals And Inattentional Blindness In A Multi-Object Tracking Task, Dakota B. Palmer, Yusuke Yamani, Taylor L. Bobrow, Nicole D. Karpinsky, Dean J. Krusienski

Psychology Faculty Publications

Inattentional blindness is a failure to notice an unexpected event when attention is directed elsewhere. The current study examined participants' awareness of an unexpected object that maintained luminance contrast, switched the luminance once, or repetitively flashed. One hundred twenty participants performed a dynamic tracking task on a computer monitor for which they were instructed to count the number of movement deflections of an attended set of objects while ignoring other objects. On the critical trial, an unexpected cross that did not change its luminance (control condition), switched its luminance once (switch condition), or repetitively flashed (flash condition) traveled across the …