Citation

Seegmiller JK, Watson JM, Strayer DL. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 2011; 37(3): 785-791.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/a0022474

PMID

21299325

Abstract

Inattentional blindness refers to the finding that people do not always see what appears in their gaze. Though inattentional blindness affects large percentages of people, it is unclear if there are individual differences in susceptibility. The present study addressed whether individual differences in attentional control, as reflected by variability in working memory capacity, modulate susceptibility to inattentional blindness. Participants watched a classic inattentional blindness video (Simons & Chabris, 1999) and were instructed to count passes among basketball players, wherein 58% noticed the unexpected: a person wearing a gorilla suit. When participants were accurate with their pass counts, individuals with higher working memory capacity were more likely to report seeing the gorilla (67%) than those with lesser working memory capacity (36%). These results suggest that variability in attentional control is a potential mechanism underlying the apparent modulation of inattentional blindness across individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en