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Review
. 2025 Aug 13;57(9):259.
doi: 10.3758/s13428-025-02789-x.

A compendium of considerations for methods in motion-induced blindness research

Vishnu Y Soni  1   2 , Joey Planchet  1   3 , John E Sparrow  4
Affiliations
Review

A compendium of considerations for methods in motion-induced blindness research

Vishnu Y Soni et al. Behav Res Methods. .

Abstract

Ever since its introduction to vision research by Bonneh and colleagues in 2001, motion-induced blindness (MIB) has spawned a great deal of scholarly activity. However, an investigation of the common methods used for the MIB task indicates several issues, including a trend of newer studies simply replicating methodologies from earlier works, ambiguity regarding what the most optimal methods are for the MIB task, and the exclusion by MIB studies of crucial details regarding the MIB task. These issues are the consequence of the past two decades of MIB research having transpired without an updated set of guidelines and considerations regarding the use of the MIB task. Therefore, we aim to review the prevalent research methods in MIB studies, shed light on overlooked implications associated with these methodologies and configurations, and highlight innovative and effective approaches to MIB-related data collection. Discussions are supported using insights from both past MIB studies and new empirical findings of the present study. Aspects of MIB research that have been covered include managing individual differences, participant fatigue, fixation, response collection methods, defining target disappearance, target positioning, and the appearance of a MIB display's constituent elements.

Keywords: Color; Fatigue; Fixation; Individual differences; Luminance; Motion; Motion-induced blindness; Response collection; Saliency; Target disappearance; Target position.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflicts of interest/Competing interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Ethics approval: Approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the University of New Hampshire (UNH IRB no. IRB-FY2022-24). The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. Consent to participate: Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study in accordance with the University of New Hampshire Institutional Review Board. Consent for publication: All authors consent to the publication of this study. Open practices statement: The data and materials for all experiments are available through figshare ( https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25903309 ). This study was not preregistered.

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