The Effect Of Ecological Unexpected Stimuli On Inattentional Blindness

When focusing their attention on some stimuli or events, people tend to be unaware orunconscious of other stimuli or events which are additional, significant, but completely visible.This phenomenon is called inattentional blindness (IB for short)(Mack&Rock,1998). Previoussystem studies on IB include (1) the size, shape, color, velocity and other physical characteristics ofunexpected stimuli;(2) individual differences, such as participants personality, emotional state andso on;(3)the effects of conspicuity, mental workload, attentional set, expectation and capacity onIB.But, Predecessors emphasized more on laboratory studies and physical characteristics ofunexpected stimuli, but lack of ecological significance. And unexpected stimuli may be morecomplex in real life, more ecological significance included. Therefore, ecological indicator isuniformly implemented in this paper. And it is divided into two level factors: emotional valenceand detail level. The paper is to investigate the effects of the two factors on IB and to furtherinvestigate the moderate effect of the relation of perceptual load and unexpected stimuli of ecology.This study includes two experiments, adopting the sustained IB paradigm from Most (2000).This first study takes circles, abstract faces (positive, neutral and negative faces) and real faces(positive, neutral and negative, and the balance of the gender effect) as unexpected stimuli, to studythe effect of ecology on IB. And in the second study the perceptual load is manipulated and thelevel of it is determined by the preliminary experiment, though the stimuli are the same as the firstone. And then two parallel studies are carried in accordance with the level of perceptual load,namely experiment two A and B. At last it is ascertained that the regulating effect of the relation ofperceptual load and unexpected stimuli of ecology.The first experimental findings are as following:(1) Compared to the positive faces andneutral ones, awareness rate of subjects is significantly higher than on negative faces as unexpectedstimuli (IB rate is lower); while awareness rate to positive faces and neutral faces is not muchdifferent.(2) Relative to circles, the awareness rate to abstract faces and real faces as unexpected stimuli is higher, while awareness rate to the abstract faces and real faces is not much different. In aword, the IB rate of negative and fine unexpected stimuli is lower, namely unexpected stimuli ofstrong ecological significance more easily captures attention.The second experimental findings are also as following:(1) No matter what kind of emotionalvalence conditions (positive, neutral and negative) is, the awareness rate of unexpected stimuli isnot much different under high, low perceptual load.(2) No matter what kind of fine conditions(high level, middle level and low level) is, subjects of high perceptual load condition have a lowerawareness rate to unexpected stimuli(especially in the accuracy of unexpected stimuli), comparedwith the low perceptual load condition.(3) Effects of ecological significance of unexpectedstimuli on IB are influenced by the factors of gender. The overall performance is the malemore "slow", as well as female is more "sensitive", which is embodied in the two dimensionsof ecological factors. In short, the perceptual load has no effect on the relationship betweenemotional valence and IB of unexpected stimuli; meanwhile perceptual load has a moderatingeffect on the relationship between fine degree of unexpected stimuli and IB. There is asystematic difference in different gender individuals as well.