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attention
You fail to notice the obvious in plain sight.
Inattentional blindness occurs when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight because their attentional resources are fully occupied by a concurrent task.
The brain does not 'delete' unattended stimuli; instead, limited cognitive capacity results in the failure to consciously process information that falls outside the current focus of attention.
You do not see the world as it is; you see it as you are focused.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Simons and Chabris, 1999
- What the check found
- The definition and source are correct, but the mechanism provided ('deleting') is a popular-science simplification that misrepresents cognitive neuroscience.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.