Do You See What Eyes See? Implementing Inattentional Blindness

This paper presents a computational model of visual attention incorporating a cognitive imperfection known as inattentional blindness. We begin by presenting four factors that determine successful attention allocation: conspicuity, mental workload, expectation and capacity. We then propose a framework to study the effects of those factors on an unexpected object and conduct an experiment to measure the corresponding subjective awareness level. Finally, we discuss the application of a visual attention model for conversational agents

Exploiting failures in metacognition through magic: Visual awareness as a source of visual metacognition bias

We used cognitive illusions/magic tricks to study the role of visual awareness as a source of biases in visual metacognitive judgments. We conducted a questionnaire-based study (n = 144) and an eye tracking study (n = 69) in which participants watched videos of four different magic tricks that capitalize on failures of visual awareness (inattentional blindness and change blindness). We measured participants’ susceptibility to these illusions, their beliefs about other people’s susceptibility, as well as the role that fixating (i.e. eye position) the critical event has on detecting the secret. Participants who detected the method of the tricks believed it was more likely that other people would detect it compared to those participants who failed to notice the method. Moreover, they believed that they moved their eyes to look at it. Eye tracking data show that, contrary to participants’ beliefs, peripheral vision played a significant role in detecting the method. Overall, the findings from these studies suggest that visual awareness may bias visual metacognitive judgments

Visual Attention and Eye Gaze During Multiparty Conversations with Distractions

Our objective is to develop a computational model to predict visual attention behavior for an embodied conversational agent. During interpersonal interaction, gaze provides signal feedback and directs conversation flow. Simultaneously, in a dynamic environment, gaze also directs attention to peripheral movements. An embodied conversational agent should therefore employ social gaze not only for interpersonal interaction but also to possess human attention attributes so that its eyes and facial expression portray and convey appropriate distraction and engagement behaviors

Predicting Inattentional Blindness with Pupillary Response in a Simulated Flight Task

Inattentional blindness (IB) is the failure of observers to notice the presence of a clearly viewable but unexpected visual event when attentional resources are diverted elsewhere. Knowing when an operator is unable to respond or detect an unexpected event may help improve safety during task performance. Unfortunately, it is difficult to predict when such failures might occur. The current study was a secondary data analysis of data collected in the Human and Autonomous Vehicle Systems Laboratory at NASA Langley Research Center. Specifically, 60 subjects (29 male, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, mean age of 34.5 years (SD = 13.3) were randomly assigned to one of three automation conditions (full automation, partial automation, and full manual) and took part in a simulated flight landing task. The dependent variable was the detection/non-detection of an IB occurrence (a truck on the landing runway). Scores on the NASA-TLX workload rating scale varied significantly by automation condition. The full automation condition reported the lowest subjective task load followed by partial automation and then manual condition. IB detection varied significantly across automation condition. The moderate workload condition of partial automation exhibited the lowest likelihood of IB occurrence. The low workload full automation condition did not differ significantly from the manual condition. Subjects who reported higher task demand had increased pupil dilation and subjects with larger pupil dilation were more likely to detect the runway incursion. These results show eye tracking may be used to identify periods of reduced unexpected visual stimulus detection for possible real-time IB mitigation

Exploring Visual Short-Term Memory in Ensembles via Change Detection

This item is only available electronically.Detecting changes in our visual environment is fundamental to our everyday functioning, for example navigating safely in traffic. Change detection is often quick and precise, with people able to capture meaning of a scene in under a second. However, people can fail to detect significant visual changes when a disruption occurs between views (Simons & Ambinder, 2005). It remains unclear just how much the finer visual details matter for detecting change in scenes. To explore whether people are more sensitive to changes in the summary, or details in natural scenes, we explored short-term visual working memory by manipulating change-size across two change detection experiments. Participants (n = 30) were presented with arrays and its summarised image average for 150ms with a blank 300ms mask in between. Confidence ratings for participant certainty in the change occurring was also investigated. Contrary to predictions, participants were better at discriminating changes in the summary statistic averages than detailed arrays. However, performance increased with proportion of change size and confidence as predicted. It was concluded change size and image representation does affect change detection, and more visual detail is not always necessary to detecting change - spare representations are not so sparse after all.Thesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 201

An Artistic Exploration of Inattention Blindness†

An experiment about inattention blindness was conducted within the context of an art exhibition as opposed to a laboratory context in order to investigate the potential of art as a vehicle to study attention and its disorders. The project utilized a flash animation, Stealing Attention, that was modeled after the movie by Simons and Chabris (1999) but with significant experimental differences, involving context and staging, the emotional salience of the objects depicted, and the prior art viewing experience of participants. The study involved two components: observing if viewers watching an animation in a gallery could be distracted from noticing the disappearance of stolen museum antiquities (the targets) by the overlaid flashing images of a card game (the distractors) and then observing whether repetition of the depicted targets throughout the gallery installation could facilitate a re-direction of attention that allowed viewers to perceive the targets not initially noted in the animation. My findings were that, after viewing the entire installation and then re-viewing the animation, 64% of the viewers who did not initially remark on the targets in the animation were then able to see them. The discussion elaborates on these findings and then considers ways in which the implications of inattention blindness paradigms might be more fully rendered by uniting insights from the two disciplines of art and neuroscience than by either alone

Inattentional Blindness: Neural Correlates and Theoretical Progress

Consciousness has remained one of the most perplexing enigmas of science and philosophy. Modern neuroscientific research seeks to understand how consciousness emerges within biological systems through identifying the necessary mechanisms that enable sensory information to be consciously experienced. Inattentional blindness (IB), the failure to notice something right in front of you, offers a profound means of studying consciousness, as it highlights the indistinct boundary between the conscious and the unconscious. The primary goal of the current thesis was to contribute to a scientific understanding of consciousness through advancing knowledge on IB. To this end, two reviews and four empirical studies were conducted. The first review provides a qualitative synthesis of empirical literature on IB that has employed neuroscientific methodology. Findings suggest that neural correlates of consciousness under conditions of IB may favour early sensory views of consciousness, however more research is needed. The second review provides a systematic review of the behavioural literature on IB, with focus on its two leading theories. Findings highlight that no theory can yet fully account for IB, and a model of IB is proposed based on the partial awareness hypothesis. Study one investigates the relation between alpha-band neural activity and IB via electroencephalography (EEG). Results indicate that a reduction in alpha activity in the pre- and post-stimulus interval correlates with consciousness of the critical stimulus during IB. Study two employs transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to examine a causal role of alpha activity in IB. Findings indicate that, relative to control conditions, those stimulated at alpha frequency were more likely to be subject to IB. Study three extends on study two by implementing auditory tone trains at various frequencies during IB. Results show no difference in rates of IB based on auditory tone frequency. Study four then addresses the degree to which semantic processing, as indexed via the N400, can occur under conditions of IB. Findings show that no significant N400 activity is observed when the eliciting stimuli are rendered unconscious via IB. Overall, the implications of the current thesis are that alpha activity has a reliable, and potentially causal, relationship with IB; that a coherent explanation of IB is yet to exist, but may be found in reconsidering the traditional view of visual consciousness more broadly; and that the endowment of meaning to sensory information may be a key function of consciousness

Nested ontology and causal options: A paradigm for consciousness

A brain charged with guiding its body through a complex and lively world from a position of solitary confinement inside its opaque skull faces a set of functional problems whose solution may account for the existence and nature of consciousness. An analysis of the more general and basic of these problems, sensory as well as motor, suggests the utility of implementing a high-level mutual interface between sensory target selection, motor action selection, and motivational ranking of needs at a late stage in the run-up to the brain’s decision about the very next action to take. The three selection processes are subject to a number of mutual dependencies such that a regimen of constraint satisfaction among them would yield gains in behavioral efficiency. The logistics of implementing such a regimen can be simplified by casting the interface in a particular nested, analog format. It would host a running synthetic summary of the rest of the brain’s interpretive labors, reflecting best estimates of the veridical current state of world, body, and needs for purposes of real-time decision making. Detailed scrutiny of the design requirements for such a mechanism discloses that it would be functionally partitioned in a way that defines a conscious mode of operation. Moreover, the design of the mechanism mandates a specific departure from veridicality at a point that makes its functional format match the assumptions of naive realism. Consciousness itself thus introduces a significant, though not insuperable, psychological obstacle to the development of a veridical account of its nature