Individual differences in susceptibility to inattentional blindness

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Title Individual differences in susceptibility to inattentional blindness
Publication Type thesis
School or College College of Social & Behavioral Science
Department Psychology
Author Seegmiller, Janelle Kim
Date 2010
Description Inattentional blindness (IB) refers to the finding that people do not always see what appears in their gaze. Though IB affects large percentages of people, it is unclear why there are individual differences in susceptibility. The present study addressed whether individual differences in attentional control modulate susceptibility to IB. Using an operation span task, participants were sorted into low, medium, or high levels of attentional control. Participants watched a classic IB video and were instructed to count passes among basketball players, wherein 42% failed to notice the unexpected: a person wearing a gorilla suit. When participants were on-task with their pass counts, susceptibility to IB decreased dramatically across the low, medium, and high groups (64%, 48%, and 35%, respectively). These results suggest that variability in attentional control is a potential mechanism underlying the apparent modulation of IB across individuals.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Inattentional blindness; Individual differences; Working memory capacity
Dissertation Institution University of Utah
Dissertation Name MS
Language eng
Rights Management ©Janelle Kim Seegmiller
Format application/pdf
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 135,523 bytes
Source original in Marriott Library Special Collections ; BF21.5 2010 .S44
ARK ark:/87278/s6x35c45
Setname ir_etd
ID 194034
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6x35c45
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