26 checked facts

Attention

Everything on this site about attention — each one naming the study behind it.

You are physically unable to see what you ignore.
In a 1999 study, roughly half of the people watching a video of people passing a ball failed to notice a person in a g…
You are blind to things right before your eyes.
When the brain is focused on a specific task, it frequently filters out entirely unrelated, visible stimuli.…
You cannot process two rapid events as separate occurrences.
The attentional blink occurs when a second target is missed if it appears within 200 to 500 milliseconds of the first …
You are constantly filtering conversations you are not hearing.
A 1953 study by Colin Cherry established the cocktail party problem, demonstrating the brain's strong tendency to filt…
Your brain ignores uniform items but highlights the oddity.
The Von Restorff effect states that an item that stands out from a group of similar items is more likely to be remembe…
A final sound can wipe out your last memory.
The suffix effect is the finding that recall of the final items in a list is inhibited if an irrelevant, spoken sound …
You are functionally blind for half a second.
The attentional blink is a performance deficit where individuals struggle to identify a second target in a rapid seque…
You are blind to dramatic changes in your environment.
Change blindness is the failure to notice significant visual alterations during a brief interruption or distraction.…
You spend 47% of your day thinking about nothing.
A 2010 study found that nearly half of our waking hours are spent thinking about something other than the present task…
You are blind to obvious changes in your environment.
Inattentional blindness occurs when you fail to perceive an unexpected stimulus due to focused attention on another ta…
You only remember the item that stands out.
The Von Restorff effect describes a mnemonic advantage where unique or distinctive items within a series of similar it…
You focus on one problem and ignore the broader reality.
The focusing illusion causes you to overestimate the importance of a single factor on your overall well-being.…
Your brain goes blind for a moment after noticing something.
The attentional blink refers to a period of diminished accuracy in detecting a second visual target, rather than an ab…
New experiences make time feel like it's slowing.
Initial studies suggested an unexpected stimulus makes its duration appear 30–50% longer, though later research shows …
Your brain misses information for a split second daily.
The attentional blink is a temporary deficit in reporting a second target when it follows a first target in rapid succ…
You are blind to the obvious when focused elsewhere.
A 1999 study showed that 46% of the participants failed to see an unexpected object while tracking moving items.…
Your brain shuts down for half a second after focusing.
Participants show significantly reduced performance in detecting a second target when it appears 200 to 500 millisecon…
You notice things more frequently after learning about them.
The frequency illusion occurs when a new piece of information you recently learned suddenly seems to appear everywhere…
You believe you are more observant than you are.
A 1998 study found that a significant portion of observers failed to detect changes in a person during a real-world in…
Bad news is heavier than good news.
A 2008 review found that humans process negative stimuli faster, remember them longer, and react to them more intensel…
You miss the obvious when your focus is occupied.
Participants often fail to notice a prominent stimulus, like a person in a costume, when they are engaged in a simple …
Your brain gives more weight to bad news.
While Hansen and Hansen (1988) identified an 'anger superiority effect,' subsequent research indicates this finding is…
An audience changes your performance depending on the task difficulty.
A 1965 study demonstrated that the mere presence of others improves performance on simple tasks while hindering it on …
You only remember the one thing that stood out.
The Von Restorff effect is a demonstrated phenomenon where an isolated item in a list is more likely to be recalled th…
Thinking about an object makes its importance grow.
In a 1998 study published in Psychological Science, Schkade and Kahneman demonstrated that people fall victim to a 'fo…
Knowing where to find information makes us forget it.
In a 2011 experiment, participants who believed a computer would save their typed facts remembered about a third less …