Abstract
When focusing attention on some objects and ignoring others, people often fail to notice the presence of an additional, unexpected object (inattentional blindness). In general, people are more likely to notice when the unexpected object is similar to the attended items and dissimilar from the ignored ones. Perhaps surprisingly, current evidence suggests that this similarity effect results almost entirely from dissimilarity to the ignored items, and it remains unclear whether similarity to the attended items affects noticing. Other aspects of similarity have not been examined at all, including whether the similarity of the attended and ignored items to each other affects noticing of a distinct unexpected object. We used a sustained inattentional blindness task to examine all three aspects of similarity. Experiment 1 (n = 813) found no evidence that increasing the similarity of the attended and ignored items to each other affected noticing of an unexpected object. Experiment 2 (n = 610) provided some of the first compelling evidence that similarity to the attended items – in addition to the ignored items – affects noticing. Experiment 3 (n = 1,044) replicated that pattern and showed that noticing rates varied with the degree of similarity to the ignored shapes but not to the attended shapes, suggesting that suppression of ignored items functions differently from the enhancement of attended items.
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Data availability
The de-identified datasets generated and analyzed as part of the current study are available at https://osf.io/5qhdc.
Code availability
The experimental code and analysis scripts for the studies are available at https://osf.io/5qhdc.
Notes
However, the effects of similarity in this study might have resulted from a confound (hence the improved study design comparing checkerboards and tessellations). Although white unexpected objects were noticed more than black ones when attending to a white shape, if people selectively ignored the checkerboard by actively inhibiting anything that included any black in it, then the black unexpected items might have been missed more because they shared a feature with the ignored objects.
When we instead use our minimal sample size of 80/group, these cutoffs increase by about 1–2%: For average noticing rates of 50–60% the 5% and 1% cutoffs change to 15% and 20% and for 80% noticing they change to 12.5% and 16.2%.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Chenwei Zhu, Alexis Lee, Esther Park, and Zaria Brim for their input, feedback, and helpful discussions during the initial development of ideas for the current study.
Funding
This research was supported by internal funds provided by the University of Illinois to Daniel J. Simons.
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Yifan Ding, Connor M. Hults, Rishi Raja, and Daniel J. Simons jointly planned and designed the experiments. Yifan Ding coded the experiments and original analysis scripts. Daniel Simons independently coded the analyses to verify their accuracy. Yifan Ding and Daniel J. Simons oversaw data collection and wrote the manuscript. All authors critically edited the manuscript and approved the final version for publication.
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The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Illinois (Protocol #09411), with a waiver of signed consent due to the low-risk, online nature of the experiment.
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The method, procedures, experimental code, and analysis scripts for each experiment were preregistered before data collection. The preregistration, code, data, and a working demo of each experiment (that does not collect data) are all available under each study component at https://osf.io/87amn/.
Appendix
Appendix
Simulation for Experiment 1. We used the minimal sample size of 91/condition with eight conditions and average noticing rates of 47%
Simulation for Experiment 2. We used the minimal sample size of 88/condition with six conditions and average noticing rates of 67%
Simulation for Experiment 3. We used the minimal sample size of 115/condition with six conditions (the combined conditions in Fig. 7) and average noticing rates of 61%
The pattern of noticing for Experiment 1 for all conditions separately
Results of the robustness analysis for Experiment 1. The upper panel compares noticing rates by the attended colors, whereas the lower panel compares noticing rates by the ignored colors. The two panels display the same data from the robustness analysis, just presented in different orders to make it easier to compare different sets of conditions
Averaged accuracy on trial 2 for each condition
Results of the robustness analysis (with more exclusions) for Experiment 2
Results for Experiment 2 with only the first half of the data included
Results of the robustness analysis (with more exclusions) for Experiment 3
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Ding, Y., Hults, C.M., Raja, R. et al. Similarity of an unexpected object to the attended and ignored objects affects noticing in a sustained inattentional blindness task. Atten Percept Psychophys 85, 2150–2169 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02794-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02794-2