Our body can't pick up outside signals in their pure form but it must receive these signals (perception), encode the external stimulus into an electrical signal (transduction), and finally the brain must interpret the signal. So surprise, surprise, we may be exposed to 10 different external stimuli and only really focus on 3. The others will not be interpreted by the brain at all. This is the essence of inattentional blindness. This adaptation helps me in my life in so many ways. I live in a busy home and the constant hubbub would be detrimental to my schoolwork if I was unable to focus on studying. It is really a terrific phenomenon that occurs when we are able to filter so many stimuli so that we can focus on a tedious task. On the other hand however, we may miss important signals because we are focused on something else. This can prove to be problematic when we have offended those around us by merely forgetting about them when something like a final is taking up most of our attention. This can lead to emotional damage. Although we may have only forgotten, the cognitive theories of emotion show that the emotions of others will be determined only by their mental interpretations. So regardless of the reason, our friend may be severely offended because it appears to them that we simply don't care about them.
Inattentional Blindness
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Your positivity about inattentional blindness definitely related to me, because in an apartment of 4 noisy girls, I definitely need this to focus on my studies. While reading your post, I was also thinking about the idea that sometimes when I'm reading my text, and then go to write something down, I may lose focus of which part I'm trying to write down because of the similar stimuli. I was wondering about the reasoning behind inattentional blindness, the negative aspects, and how the brain chooses what stimuli to perceive? Are some types of stimuli easier to ignore or focus on than others? It would be interesting to research more about how the stimuli is processed, and how the processing is impacted.
I observed inattention blindness just earlier today. I was riding in the car with my mom and the windshield wipers were going. It had stopped raining a good twenty minutes before, and although we were looking out the windshield we somehow did not pay attention to the windshield wipers were still going despite the lack of rain.
I love taking advantage of this phenomenon for studying... noise-canceling headphones, for the win. Highly recommended. There's two of three things to focus on right there... music, and homework.