The relationship between sustained inattentional blindness and working memory capacity

Abstract

Inattentional blindness, whereby observers fail to detect unexpected stimuli, has been robustly demonstrated in a range of situations. Originally research focused primarily on how stimulus characteristics and task demands affect inattentional blindness, but increasingly studies are exploring the influence of observer characteristics on the detection of unexpected stimuli. It has been proposed that individual differences in working memory capacity predict inattentional blindness, on the assumption that higher working memory capacity confers greater attentional capacity for processing unexpected stimuli. Unfortunately, empirical investigations of the association between inattentional blindness and working memory capacity have produced conflicting findings. To help clarify this relationship, we examined the relationship between inattentional blindness and working memory capacity in two samples (Ns = 195, 147) of young adults. We used three common variants of sustained inattentional blindness tasks, systematically manipulating the salience of the unexpected stimulus and primary task practice. Working memory capacity, measured by automated operation span (both Experiments 1 & 2) and N-back (Experiment 1 only) tasks, did not predict detection of the unexpected stimulus in any of the inattentional blindness tasks tested. Together with previous research, this undermines claims that there is a robust relationship between inattentional blindness and working memory capacity. Rather, it appears that any relationship between inattentional blindness and working memory is either too small to have practical significance or is moderated by other factors and consequently varies with attributes such as the sample characteristics within a given study.

Inattentional deafness to auditory alarms: Inter-individual differences, electrophysiological signature and single trial classification

“…As hypothesized, the working memory score did not predict the propensity to remain aware of the auditory alarms. This result is in line with previous studies that report an absence of relation between the working memory span and the occurrence of inattentional blindness (Beanland & Chan, 2016;Bredemeier & Simons, 2012;Kreitz et al, 2016a;Kreitzet al, 2016b) or inattentional deafness (Kreitzet al, 2016b). Though working memory capacity-as a measure of cognitive resources at a centrallevel-has been shown to be related to individuals' sustained and divided attentional performance (Colflesh & Conway, 2007;Sörqvist et al, 2012;Unsworth & Engle, 2007), this construct seems not appropriated to account for inattentional deafness.…”

Distractibility is a function of engagement, not task difficulty: Evidence from a new oculomotor capture paradigm.

“…However, we think this is unlikely. There have been several attempts in the literature at linking individual differences in cognitive capacities and IB (e.g., Beanland & Chan, 2016; Bredemeier & Simons, 2012; Kreitz, Furley, Memmert, & Simons, 2015), and these studies have systematically failed to find such a relationship. The same is true regarding differences in emotional profiles among individuals: Differences in factors like negative affect, anhedonic depression, anxious arousal, and worry alone do not predict differences in IB either (Bredemeier, Hur, Berenbaum, Heller, & Simons, 2014).…”

A Neuroergonomics Approach to Mental Workload, Engagement and Human Performance

“…It has been demonstrated that individuals with greater information processing capacity (i.e., higher working memory span) exhibit superior ability with respect to divided and sustained attention (Colflesh and Conway, 2007;Unsworth and Engle, 2007), and therefore, should be less susceptible to the effects of inattention during the performance of demanding tasks. However, this hypothesis is contradicted by the absence of any correlation between individual differences in processing capacity and the occurrence of inattentional blindness (Bredemeier and Simons, 2012;Beanland and Chan, 2016;Kreitz et al, 2016a) or deafness (Kreitz et al, 2016b;Dehais et al, 2019).…”