4x49ers

4x49ers t1_ja55m7i wrote

I'm thinking of something I learned as task oriented blindness but is apparently really called Inattentional blindness.

>Inattentional blindness or perceptual blindness (rarely called inattentive blindness) occurs when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits.

To over simplify a bit, they didn't see them because they weren't looking for them. You might have heard of the invisible gorilla test which demonstrates it, and I recall a BBC program where they were testing it as well: they had a pilot fly some people from A to B telling them to keep an eye out for X, I can't recall. Anywhere they flew over Stonehenge on the way there, and no one saw it, then flying the same route back (without being told to look for X) they were surprised to find it along the same path.

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