Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-22-2016
Abstract
In two experiments, we evaluated whether a perceiver’s prior expectations could alone obliterate his or her awareness of a salient visual stimulus. To establish expectancy, observers first made a demanding visual discrimination on each of three baseline trials. Then, on a fourth, critical trial, a single, salient and highly visible object appeared in full view at the center of the visual field and in the absence of any competing visual input. Surprisingly, fully half of the participants were unaware of the solitary object in front of their eyes. Dramatically, observers were blind even when the only stimulus on display was the face of U.S. President Barack Obama. We term this novel, counter intuitive phenomenon, Barack Obama Blindness (BOB). Employing a method that rules out putative memory effects by probing awareness immediately after presentation of the critical stimulus, we demonstrate that the BOB effect is a true failure of conscious vision.
Comments
This article was originally published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, available at DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00118
Copyright ©2016 Persuh and Melara. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).