University of Utah psychologists have learned why many people experience "inattention blindness" - the phenomenon that leaves drivers on cell phones prone to traffic accidents and makes a gorilla invisible to viewers of a famous video.
The answer: People who fail to see something right in front of them while they are focusing on something else have lower "working memory capacity" - a measure of "attentional control," or the ability to focus attention when and where needed, and on more than one thing at a time.
"Because people are different in how well they can focus their attention, this may influence whether you'll see something you're not expecting, in this case, a person in a gorilla suit walking across the computer screen," says the study's first author, Janelle Seegmiller, a psychology doctoral student.
The study - explaining why some people are susceptible to inattention blindness and others are not - will be published in the May issue of The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.
Seegmiller conducted the research with two psychology faculty members - Jason Watson, an assistant professor, and David Strayer, a professor and leader of several studies about cell phone use and distracted driving....... read more>>>...
