| 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. |
