WEEK 2 HOMEWORK Visual Perception Discussion

Samantha White

Karla Walton

Davida Moss

Antonia Love

University of Phoenix

PSY/345

Learning Team Project

Week 2

Good morning and thank you for joining our discussion of how visual perception can be affected by inattentional blindness and what kind of different aids will be used in helping individuals who will be affected. In this area let us open and challenge our minds on what might be interesting questions to how one can come up with their theories of how is blindness will hurt people and how the best way to tackle the problem areas also. Also, since our eyes play a large part in inattentional blindness, we will discuss how perception can depend on several factors and the role of attention in visual perception.

Living in this early 21st century, we deal with a lot of distraction and it has shown to be a major problem socially. In today’s world electronics has played a major role on communicating with family and friends, using social media instead of reading the news, and better yet shopping for the latest fashion trends. Many are starting to show the newest trend of a phenomenon that is now recognized as inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness (often referred to as perceptual blindness) is best described as a lack of attention. It may sound like an issue with the eyes but is instead based on the inability to see what others might be able to see due to distractions and an absence of focus. It states that, “the failure to notice unexpected objects or events when attention is focuses elsewhere is now known as inattentional blindness. The study of such failures of awareness has a long history, but their practical importance has received increasing attention over the past decade (Simons, 2015). (Para.1)

1. How can having inattentional blindness affect you in everyday life?
   • This phenomenon of being blind to an unattended event is called inattentional blindness. So while we may think we are aware of the world around us, there are tricky ways in which our attention and perception can deceive us. Inattentional blindness has no association with vision impairment. However, it has many direct negative effects in our lives. Since it is an event where we fail to see an unexpected stimulus even if it is too obvious, we tend to be caught off guard. As a result, we may find ourselves stuck in unfavorable situations.
2. Why does inattentional blindness occur?
   • Inattentional Blindness occurs where attention to one thing causes us to miss what to others may seem to be blindingly obvious. We have a limited ability to focus and attention in one area can distract us from another area. Visually, if we are engaged in imagination we create an internal picture that uses some of the bandwidth of the image processing parts of the brain. This may impede the ability to process real-world images. This effect is significantly increased after drinking even a small amount of alcohol, which may dull our ability to attend.
3. What are the pros of inattentional blindness?
   • This disorder can actually be a positive thing. This ability to block out certain distractions can allow for focus in other departments. This can be positive for individuals in professions such as athletes, performers, and even surgeons.
4. What are the cons of inattentional blindness?
   • However, with most anything with pros there are cons as well. This blindness can be negative when it affects the ability to do everyday tasks. Also it could be dangerous if an individual can’t focus while dealing with hazardous situations.
5. What can be done to prevent inattentional blindness?
   • You can optimize your performance by minimizing distractions and try to limit multitasking. Try to stay focused on one task at a time. It is also important to limit your multi-tasking. If you have suffered from any brain trauma it might be helpful minimize visual and cognitive clutter and to take steps to reduce processing load.
6. How can inattentional blindness affect your driving?
   • Distracted driving is one of the most common causes for car accidents. Talking on a cell phone is a common reason for distracted driving, and it often leads to inattentional blindness. This means that if you are talking on your cell phone while driving, you may be looking through the windshield and you think that you are focused on the road, but chances are that you can’t see everything that is going on in front of you even though it’s in your field of view. This is because your brain is focused on the act of talking on the phone, and you can’t see an object that is directly in front of you. Drivers must never eat, drink, adjust various devices in their cars, or talk on their phones while driving, because all that can cause inattentional blindness, which in turn can result in an accident.
7. What kind of experiments can be used to test inattentional blindness?
   • In order to test inattentional blindness you could show a person the same image over and over again that are slightly different every time and see if they notice the difference in the images. For example, an expirement was used where an image of the cross was flashed over and over again and the person who was experimented on was asked to indicate which arm was longer in the pictures.