Special Coverage

Inattentional Blindness, Attention Capture, and Eyewitness Memory: Filling in the Gaps (189)

Ira Hyman, Jr., Ellen Carroll, Macey Crooks, Tess Schorn, Lori Reyna, and Madison Hansen (Western Washington University)

Summary by Jonathan Caballero, Digital Content Associate Editor

If You Don't See Something, You May Answer As If You Did

Ira Hyman presented data about how accidents and crimes sometimes capture witnesses' attention and how this affects their memory of the event's details.

These events are unusual experiences in most people's lives (hopefully!). As shown in the screenshot below, attention may be captured earlier or later during the course of the event, or not at all - a phenomenon called "inattentional blindness."

Hyman and his team investigated whether participants would answer questions about aspects of events that occurred before they captured their attention. If they did, were they accurate?

In one experiment, participants watched a video of a car accident video to people. They were in one of three conditions: 1) only watch, 2) watch while engaging in an unrelated task, or 3) lookout for the upcoming accident. They compared when participants became aware of the accident with their responses to questions about the entire event.

As you'd expect, participants who knew an accident was coming were more likely to spot it (and to do it earlier) than participants who were only watching it. And people engaged in other tasks were more likely to experience inattentional blindness.

Interestingly, people who became aware of the accident after it had already started are willing to provide details that occurred previously, and they often answer wrong!

Because in real life, witnesses are likely to be engaged in other activities while crimes or accidents occur, they may fail to notice them, and even if they do, they may do so late. No matter how well-intentioned they are, eyewitnesses may provide inaccurate responses to events they hadn't fully experienced.