Are Familiar Objects More Likely to Be Noticed in an Inattentional Blindness Task?

Abstract

People often fail to notice the presence of unexpected objects when their attention is engaged elsewhere. In dichotic listening tasks, for example, people often fail to notice unexpected content in the ignored speech stream even though they occasionally do notice highly familiar stimuli like their own name (the "cocktail party" effect). Some of the first studies of inattentional blindness were designed as a visual analog of such dichotic listening studies, but relatively few inattentional blindness studies have examined how familiarity affects noticing. We conducted four preregistered inattentional blindness experiments (total N = 1700) to examine whether people are more likely to notice a familiar unexpected object than an unfamiliar one. Experiment 1 replicated evidence for greater noticing of upright schematic faces than inverted or scrambled ones. Experiments 2-4 tested whether participants from different pairs of countries would be more likely to notice their own nation's flag or petrol company logo than those of another country. These experiments repeatedly found little or no evidence that familiarity affects noticing rates for unexpected objects. Frequently encountered and highly familiar stimuli do not appear to overcome inattentional blindness.

Keywords: awareness; cocktail party effect; familiarity; inattentional blindness; noticing; selective attention.

Figure 1

Schematic illustration of a critical trial sequence in Experiments 1–4, along with all possible unexpected objects used in each experiment. The timing of the displays was the same for all four experiments: A fixation dot appeared for 1,000 ms, followed by the cross for 200 ms, and then by a mask. On the critical trial, an unexpected object replaced the fixation dot while the cross was present. The mask in Experiment 1 was black and white because the unexpected objects (face stimuli) were the same colors as well. Experiments 2–4 used a color mask because the unexpected objects were colored (flags in Experiment 2 and petrol company logos in Experiments 3 and 4).

Figure 2

Simulation illustrating the likelihood of differences in noticing rates of various magnitudes as a function of the mean noticing rate across the two groups (with no actual difference in noticing between the two groups). The horizontal dashed line is at 5%, so differences in noticing falling below that line would be expected less than 5% of the time if there actually were no differences between groups. The graph shows average noticing rates above 50%, but the pattern would be the same for averages less than 50% based on how far they fall from 50% (e.g., the results for an average of 40% would be the same as for an average of 60%).

Figure 3

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 1 along with earlier results with schematic faces from studies by Mack & Rock (1998) and Redlich, Memmert, & Kreitz (2022).

Figure 4

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 2.

Figure 5

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 2 – exploratory analysis.

Figure 6

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 3.

Figure 7

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 3 – secondary analysis.

Figure 8

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 3 – exploratory analysis.

Figure 9

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 4.

Figure 10

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 4 – a secondary analysis.

Figure 11

Pattern of noticing for Experiment 4 – an exploratory analysis.