Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindness.
Makaela Nartker, Chaz Firestone, Howard Egeth, Ian Phillips
Elife May 19, 2025 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.100337 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational cohort Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Human participants in inattentional blindness studies |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Human Inattentional blindness Signal detection Perception sensation Recognition Observation Attention focus Concentration Vigilance Consciousness awareness Sentience Selective attention Perceptual blin |
| Citations | 9 |
| Key findings | Inattentionally blind participants can successfully report the location, color, and shape of stimuli they deny noticing, demonstrating that perceptual information remains accessible in inattentional blindness. |
Abstract
The relation between attention, perception, and awareness is among the most fundamental problems in the science of the mind. One of the most striking and well-known phenomena bearing on this question is inattentional blindness (IB). In IB, naive observers fail to report clearly visible stimuli when their attention is otherwise engaged-famously missing a gorilla parading before their eyes. IB carries tremendous significance, both as evidence that awareness requires attention and as a tool in seeking the neural correlates of consciousness. However, such implications rest on a notoriously biased measure: asking participants whether they noticed anything unusual (and interpreting negative answers as reflecting a complete lack of perception). Here, in the largest ever set of IB studies, we show that, as a group, inattentionally blind participants can successfully report the location, color, and shape of stimuli they deny noticing, demonstrating that perceptual information remains accessible in IB. By introducing absent trials, we further show that observers are collectively biased to report not noticing in IB-essentially 'playing it safe' in reporting their sensitivity. These data provide the strongest evidence to date of significant residual visual sensitivity in IB. They also challenge the use of inattentional blindness to argue that awareness requires attention.
Comparable studies
Other observational and cohort studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Using Self-Report Assessment Methods to Explore Facets of Mindfulness Undergraduate students | 2006 | Observational cohort | |
| Effectiveness of a meditation-based stress reduction program in the treatment of anxiety disorders Patients with generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder with or without agoraphobia | 1992 | Observational cohort | n = 22 |
| Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness Participants with extensive Insight meditation experience and matched controls | 2005 | Observational cohort | n = 20 |
| Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity Experienced meditators and matched meditation-naive controls | 2011 | Observational cohort | |
| Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice Long-term Buddhist practitioners and controls | 2004 | Observational cohort |
Citations in the library
Cited by 3
Cites 7
- Perceptual Awareness Occurs Along a Graded Continuum: No Evidence of All-or-None Failures in Continuous Reproduction Tasks. Psychological Science August 31, 2023
- Growing evidence for separate neural mechanisms for attention and consciousness. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics October 9, 2020
- Toward a Theory of Consciousness: A Review of The Neural Correlates of Inattentional Blindness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews September 1, 2019
- The attention schema theory: a mechanistic account of subjective awareness Frontiers in Psychology July 4, 2016
- Absolute and relative blindsight. Consciousness and Cognition March 2015
and 2 more in the library