How can you explain the phrase looking but not seeing and relate it to research and theories of visual attention?

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There are times when we don’t notice what’s happening in our surroundings because we are focusing our attention on something else. Focusing our attention on a certain object may happen to such extent that we cannot perceive other objects (Simons & Chabris, 1999). This essay will explain the phrase ‘looking but not seeing’ and relate it to research and theories of visual attention.

This paragraph will discuss two main metaphors which are used to describe the manner in which attention is distributed in visual space. One of the most famous metaphors for spatial attention is the ‘attentional spotlight’ - where attention moves around our field of vision so that the things falling within its beam are processed preferentially. Attention can be both consciously directed and hijacked by unconscious processes. One classic experiment that finds the 'attentional spotlight' zipping away from eye direction was carried out by Posner and his colleagues (Psyblog, 2009). In a cueing experiment, subjects were required to respond as quickly as possible to the onset of a light. This target stimulus was preceded by a “cue” whose function was to draw attention to the occurrence of a target in space. As a general rule, cues facilitate detection of and response to stimuli presented at the cued location (Goldstein, 2001). Posner argued that it’s our attention moving around the visual field, often remarkably independent of our actual gaze direction. Even if we're looking directly at something, and when we don't expect to see it, we're no more likely to notice it than if it appears on the edge of our vision. It appears that attention can be likened to a spotlight roving across our vision like a virtual eye, just picking out the things in which it is interested; it's not as attached to where we point our eyes as we might imagine (Psyblog, 2009).

More flexible metaphor in attentional distribution is zoom – lens. colleagues have suggested that visual attention operates like a zoom lens or camera (Schneider & Maasen, 1998). Rather than a beam of attention of a set size, they argued that we zoom in and out depending on the task (Psyblog, 2009). Thus, attention can either be focused on a small region of visual space, with a high resolving power, or alternately focused on a large region of space, with a lower resolving power (Schneider & Maasen, 1998). This metaphor shouldn’t be interpreted too literally for reporting that the attentional beam can be shifted to an entirely different region instantly, regardless of how far away this new region is. A zoom lens metaphor would imply that the time taken to shift attention would be influenced by a distance. To support this statement experiments were done (Glenstrup & Nielsen, 2010). Scientists examined the interference effects of irrelevant distractors in the visual field. Results showed that when a pre-cue was given to the target location, interference occurred with a response-incompatible distractor near the target but with no location, pre-cue interference could occur from more distant distractors. It was suggested that without a cue target location, attention is initially widely distributed and all items in the display are processed in parallel, leading to interference for more distant distractors. However, with a pre-cue to location, attention can be narrowed down so that only distractors very close to the target will interfere (Styles, 2005). Although both metaphors are suggesting that by opening our eyes, we see everything in our field of view, therefore, when attention is not focused onto items in a scene they can go unnoticed. When a spotlight of our attention is voluntary or involuntary focused on one part of environment we may ignore or be ‘blind’ to stimuli occurring in other parts (Bernstein et al, 2008).We can explain this using bottom-up and top-down processes. The bottom-up process is purely stimulus driven (e.g. candle burning in a dark). In this case, the conspicuous visual stimulus captures attention automatically without volitional control. The top-down process is a directed volitional process of focusing attention on one or more objects which are relevant to the observer’s goal. The conspicuous objects in a scene that would normally attract the viewer’s attention may be ignored if they are irrelevant to the task at hand (Yee, Pattanaik & Greenberg, 2001).

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The phenomena – failure to see unattended items in a scene; literally ‘looking but not seeing’ is called Inattentional Blindness. It was found by Mack and Rock who made a radical claim that there is no conscious perception of the visual world without attention to it. Attention involved in Inattentional Blindness is space based: the degree of blindness increases with increasing distance from the centre of attention. It is also easily diverted – hence the common use of a test stimulus that is completely unexpected (Banks, 2009). Innatentional blindness is illustrated in a study who has revealed that people ...

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