Published December 24, 1999
| public
Journal Article
Inattentional Blindness Versus Inattentional Amnesia for Fixated But Ignored Words
Abstract
People often are unable to report the content of ignored information, but it is unknown whether this reßects a complete failure to perceive it (inattentional blindness) or merely that it is rapidly forgotten (inattentional amnesia). Here functional imaging is used to address this issue by measuring brain activity for unattended words. When attention is fully engaged with other material, the brain no longer differentiates between meaningful words and random letters, even when they are looked at directly. These results demonstrate true inattentional blindness for words and show that visual recognition wholly depends on attention even for highly familiar and meaningful stimuli at the center of gaze.
Additional Information
Received for publication 9 July 1999. Accepted for publication 16 November 1999. Supported by the Wellcome Trust and by an Economic and Social Research Council (U.K.) grant to J. D. We thank F. Crick, R. Frackowiak, C. Koch, and C. Mummery for helpful comments and the late I. Rock for inspiration.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 40502
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.286.5449.2504
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130816-103223904
- Wellcome Trust
- Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
- Created
-
2008-01-26Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Koch Laboratory (KLAB)