A Tale of Two Theories

Abstract

Inattentional blindness (IB), the failure to notice something right in front of you, offers cognitive scientists and practitioners alike a unique means of studying the nature of visual perception. The present meta-analysis sought to provide the first synthesis of the two leading theories of IB—attention set and load theory. We aimed to estimate the magnitude of the effect of each, how they interact, and how task parameters moderate the magnitude of IB summary estimates. We further sought to address several theoretical issues that have persisted within this broad literature. A total of 317 effect sizes from 81 studies that had manipulated attention set or load were synthesized in a multilevel meta-analysis. Results indicated no significant difference between the attention set summary estimate (odds ratio [OR] = 3.26, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] [2.33, 4.57]) and the load summary estimate (OR = 1.75, 95% CI [1.10, 2.79]). Theoretical moderators included a difference between feature attention sets (OR = 5.02, 95% CI [2.95, 8.55]), semantic attention sets (OR = 2.64, 95% CI [1.64, 4.25]), and inherent sets (OR = 1.90, 95% CI [1.35, 2.68]), while perceptual load (OR = 2.55, 95% CI [1.66, 3.92]) and cognitive load (OR = 1.67, 95% CI [1.14, 2.44]) were more comparable. The primary task was found as a key task parameter that moderated summary estimates. The attention set summary estimate was moderated by the number of targets and distractors, whereas the load summary estimate was moderated by the full attention (FA) trial exclusion criterion. Analyses indicated any potential publication bias were overall not likely to impact our conclusions. We discuss the implications of results for a conceptual understanding of IB and how the phenomenon can be more reliably studied in future. Show more