Inattentional Blindness Research

In today’s world, distractions remain prevalent in simple everyday occurrences. Amongst these distractions is the use of cell phones whether simply walking down the hallway absorbed in a conversation or behind the wheel driving down the highway. Cell phones, no matter the context, are a major distraction. They have managed to pull us away from spending time with our families and appearing in places they are not prevalent such as family dinners and behind the wheel of a car.

Driving Us to Distraction Summary-Response Paper The essay, ‘Driving us to Distraction’ by Gilbert Cruz is about the dangers of hands-free technology while driving. The author argues that while driving and talking on a cell phone is deadly, using hands-free technology is not that much better of a choice. He supports his argument by citing a 2003 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study that found cellphone use to be a serious hazard on the road and by mentioning a series of simulator tests conducted in 2007 by a psychology professor at the University of Utah named David Strayer.

“The reaction time of a distracted cell phone driver is more than 40% than those of an undistracted driver” (Hague).

There are both cognitive and physical factors that contribute to accidents when drivers talk on their cell phones and/or text behind the wheel. The primary cognitive factor is that an individual’s attention is divided when he or she is paying attention to more than one thing at a time (Goldstein, 2011). For example, a driver’s attention is on the road and perhaps how far the car ahead of him/her is, but at the same time is also trying to read a text message on a cellular device. This divided attention reduces the reaction speed and driving performance of the driver because there are not as many cognitive resources available to focus his/her attention on the most important thing: driving. When the driver is processing

You feel the vibrating in your pocket, and quickly pull out your phone to respond to that all too important text. Half-way through the text you run into someone and mutter a quick sorry while finishing up your text. Little did you know that “someone” was a trash can, but you were too busy texting to notice. You are walking through the hallway at school later that day, and something catches your eye. While taking that quick glance, you run into a couple of people. After muttering your apology, you continue on your way. After school, you’re walking through the parking talking on your cell phone, when you hear car wheels screeching. You look up and realize that car almost hit you. You wave at the person and mouth sorry, but

Change blindness shows surprising perception phenomenon that is noticed through the visual change of stimulus introduced and observers do not notice the change. When observer fails to observe and notice the change major changes and differences introduced into an image at a flick off and on again. People having poor ability in detecting the changes are argued to have limitation of human attention (Hecht-Nielsen & McKenna, 2003). Change blindness has provided a wide range of research that has important and practical implications especially in eyewitness position and distraction while driving among other areas.

The use of pulling a phone out while driving , particularly for texting and during phone to ear conversations , cause visual , manual and cognitive distraction (Thompson 4 ). When drivers pull out their phones they are taking more than 50% of their attention away from the roads, for example some

These tasks require mind-off-the-road. Researcher Green found out that the tasks which are not visually demanding like day dreaming or listening to a long speech in phone could increase the probability of crashes. Two different conditions and a control condition were compared with 24 participants actively participating in it [5].

Past studies have shown that pedestrians who used a phone while crossing the street are likely to experience a decrease in situational awareness, attention distraction and unsafe pedestrian behaviours (Nasar & Troyerb,

An adaptation of the previously successful Queensland government campaign ‘Are You Driving Blind’, ‘Get Your Hand off It’ highlights the dangers of distracted driving, as they draw attention to the increased risk of a serious or fatal crash caused by mobile phone use.

While driving, cell phones impair the driver's visual skills. Specifically in Impactful Distractions by Nathan Seppa he elaborates on how “special vision-tracking devices showed that conversations requiring extra thought or concentration diminished drivers’ extent of visual scanning” (Seppa 2). Having good visual awareness is essential for driving, but when drivers talk and drive, their visual awareness sharply decreases. Drivers need to be aware of their surroundings since driving is unpredictable. Cars are machines that thrive on the fact that humans operate them. People need to be visually attentive while driving, yet cell phones prohibit them from doing so. Additionally, David Strayer explains that “‘a cell phone draws attention away from

Studies conducted from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety shows that using a cell phone while driving significantly impairs a driver’s reaction time and triples the risk of being involved in a crash or near-crash, and text messaging increases crash risk by a multiple of 8 for all ages (NHTSA, 2009). Situational awareness is significantly decreased while engaging in distracted driving, and in turn inattention blindness is increased drastically creating a potentially deadly situation on the roads. A driver who is multitasking has less brain function available and thus literally fails to see or pay attention to things that are squarely in the field of vision (Texting and Driving, 2010). On the other hand there are those that may be able to multitask successfully though the challenge is

In the article, Did You See the Unicycling Clown? Inattentional Blindness while Walking and Talking on a Cell Phone, by Ira Hyman and associates from Western Washington University, Hyman studied the concept of divided attention during walking. He conducted two studies, the first analyzed what students behavior was like if they were walking with their cellphone, MP3 player, or just walking with a friend. As they observed students on their way to class, a clown on a unicycle rode all around the quad. Hyman found that cell phone users walked more slowly, changed directions, and less likely to pay attention to their surroundings and others (Hyman, 2009, p. 600). Hyamn then states, “In the second study, we found that cell phone users were less likely to notice an unusual activity along their walking route (a unicycling clown). Cell phone usage may cause inattentional blindness even during a simple activity that should require few cognitive resources.” (Hyman, 2009, p. 597). Hyman and his colleagues shared that the

Have you ever experienced or have you seen someone texting, talking, listening to music, while walking and they run into something or someone because they were distracted by using their phones? The article I have chosen for this week is about a study on the behaviors of people/pedestrians and inattentional blindness. The study had taken place in Taiwan. The control groups had no device given and their crossing behaviors were monitored, experimental group were give a device so their behaviors could be monitored while texting, talking, and listening to music. People/pedestrians were monitored to see if there were any inattentional blindness and if they could see or hear on abnormal object in close proximity to them such as, a

People are dying in the streets at an alarming rate , and their cellphones to blame. Although this might sound a bit sensationalist/hyperbolic, It’s true; Are favorite distraction are -cell phone- is to blame for rising amounts of injuries and deaths in are local intersections. The people of honolulu has recently enacted legislation to discourage residents from distractingly walking into intersection while looking down at their cell phones. Recent news stories and the concerning statistics related to this issue are enough to prove we definitely should enact legislation in our city against distracted walking.