What's "inattentional" about inattentional blindness?
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.
Most
Steven B
SB
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, 108 Wolf Hall, Newark, DE 19716-2577, United States. most@psych.udel.edu
D001288:Attention; D054518:Attentional Blink; D001364:Awareness; D005133:Eye Movements; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008273:Magic; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D013028:Space Perception; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology