«Dead Zones» in Attention

Utochkin I.S.

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Experimental Psychology (Russia)

Publisher: Moscow State University of Psychology and Education

ISSN (printed version): 2072-7593

ISSN (online): 2311-7036

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/exppsy

License: CC BY-NC 4.0

Started in 2008

Published quarterly

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RU In Russian

Experimental Psychology (Russia)
2009. Vol. 2, no. 2, 16–30
ISSN: 2072-7593 / 2311-7036 (online)

«Dead Zones» in Attention ²⁰²¹

Utochkin I.S.
PhD in Psychology, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology, State University - Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
e-mail: iutochkin@hse.ru

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This essay describes two experimental studies, which demonstrate the existence of «dead zones» in visual attention. The phenomenon of «dead zones» manifests in the task of finding and identifying changes, and is one example within the currently widely-studied field of change blindness – the inability to find and/ or identify visual changes of an object in a field of vision, under the conditions of interruptions of perception in the moment of the aforementioned changes. «Dead zones» in visual attention are starkly expressed «blindness» to changes in objects which are located in close proximity to an object which attracts higher attention. In Experiment 1, the phenomenon of «dead zones» is demonstrated in the context of a standard methodology of «flickering», designed to study change blindness in complex visual scenarios (Rensink et al., 1997). In Experiment 2, the phenomenon is demonstrated by a specially developed methodology of sudden changes. This essay discusses hypotheses of the possible mechanisms pertaining to these «dead zones» in attention.

Keywords: change blindness, «dead zones» in attention, attention focus, flicker methodology, sudden change methodology

Column: Psychophysics

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