Exacerbating Perceptual Blindness in an Era of Continual Stimulation from Social Media

Exacerbating Perceptual Blindness in an Era of Continual Stimulation From Social Media

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April I. Gardner

A Thesis in the Field of Biology

for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies

Harvard University

Perceptual, or inattentional, blindness is the failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object. This study aims to answer the role of social media in people's lives: broadly, what is its role in influencing attention, and specifically, does spending time on it affect inattentional blindness? Through a series of self-response surveys, we aim to determine what people are processing visually, particularly after spending time on social media, which is rich with pictures, stories, news, and links--all of which, together, can tax cognitive resources.

Participants in this study were recruited online using Mechanical Turk to target individuals who used social media. A self-report questionnaire was used to capture information about the participants’ age, gender, social media usage, and their preferred networks. To determine implicit cognition, participants were asked to perform a specific task by viewing a video, which also contains unexpected stimuli. At the conclusion of the video, they were asked to name any unexpected stimuli that also appeared, to determine their level of inattentional blindness. Findings provide initial evidence that exposure to social media exacerbates inattentional blindness. This study also begins to answer a series of follow-up questions. For instance, now that people are living increasingly more hours on a social media paradigm, how are people's ability to focus getting affected, if at all?

And if it is being affected, what's good or bad about that shift? Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to the many people who are affected by inattentional blindness, every day.

iv Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Dr. Fiery Cushman, Dr. James Morris, Chuck Houston, and Harvard

University for their kindness, support, and invaluable assistance with this thesis.

v Table of Contents

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

List of Tables ...... vii

List of Figures ...... viii

Chapter I Introduction ...... 1

Definition of Terms ...... 4

The Question...... 7

Alternative Hypotheses...... 8

Background of the Problem...... 9

Defining Attention ...... 14

Defining Inattentional Blindness...... 15

Defining Expectation ...... 16

Defining Conspicuity...... 17

Defining Capacity...... 18

Defining Mental Workload and Task Interference...... 19

Chapter II Materials and Methods ...... 20

Study Protocol: Variables...... 20

Study Protocol: Online Collection through MTurk...... 20

Study Protocol: Participants...... 21

Study Protocol: Social Media Survey...... 22

Study Protocol: Online Survey for Inattentional Blindness...... 22

Chapter III Results ...... 26

vi Participant Performance Results: Age...... 28

Participant Performance Results: Overall Inattentional Blindness...... 29

Participant Performance Results: Color and Motion...... 29

Participant Performance Results: High Social Media Users...... 30

Participant Performance Results: Social Media Use Overall...... 30

Chapter IV Discussion Overview...... 33

Inferences on Divided Attention in Social Media...... 33

Inferences on Unexpected Stimuli & Color...... 37

Inferences on Overall Participant Performance...... 38

Future Directions ...... 43

Follow Up Studies ...... 44

Conclusion ...... 44

References ...... 55

Appendix ...... 46

vii List of Tables

Table 1 Age of Participants ...... 21

Table 2 Gender of Participants ...... 22

Table 3 Model Fitting Information of Analysis I...... 26

Table 4 Parameter Estimates of Analysis I ……...... 26

Table 5 Model Fitting Information of Analysis II...... 27

Table 6 Parameter Estimates of Analysis II...... 27

Table 7 Inattentional Blindness Test Performance by Age Range...... 28

Table 8 Participant Reports on Inattentional Blindness Test...... 28

Table 9 Participants Who Are High Social Media Users...... 35

Table 10 Participants: See the Gorilla and Guess the Number of Passes...... 35

Table 11 Participants: See No Gorilla; Guess the Number of Passes…...... 36

Table 12 Participants: See No Gorilla; Guess Incorrect Number of Passes...... 36

Table 13 Participants: See the Gorilla and Guess the Number of Passes...... 36

Table 14 Participant Facebook Use...... 44

Table 15 Social Media Responses ...... 48

Table 16 Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ)...... 52

Table 17 CFQ Participant Average Scores by Question...... 53

viii List of Figures

Figure 1 Process of Social Media Usage Effect on Inattentional Blindness...... 8

Figure 2 The Ponzo Illusion and Pattern-Matrix Experiments...... 10

Figure 3 Average Daily Time Spent on Social Media...... 13

Figure 4 Original Invisible Gorilla Video by Daniel Simons...... 24

Figure 5 Daniel Simons Monkey Business Illusion Video View 1...... 24

Figure 6 Daniel Simons Monkey Business Illusion Video View 2...... 25

Figure 7 Social Network Usage: Top Application as Selected by Participants..... 31

Figure 8 Frequency that Participants Report Checking Their Social Media ...... 31

Figure 9 Devices that Participants Use Most to Check Their Social Media...... 31

Figure 10 Content Types That Participants Share Most on Social Media...... 32

Figure 11 Twitter screen ……………...... 38

Figure 12 Facebook screen ……………...... 38

Figure 13 Instagram screen ……………...... 39

Figure 14 Snapchat screen ……………...... 39

Figure 15: View 1 of Participant Survey Results...... 46

Figure 16: View 2 of Participant Survey Results...... 47

ix Chapter I

Introduction

We live in an age when we can access information easily and immediately through an always-on world of online resources, social media, and interactive interfaces.

At the same time, we live in a physical world that constantly competes for our attention: personal relationships with friends and family, professional obligations for projects and deadlines, and environmental cues during navigation and weather. In short, there is a deluge of information for our senses–especially our sight–to process at any given time.

Although it is easy to believe that as long as our eyes are open, we are seeing everything, many experimenters have revealed the complex ways in which our brains attend to specific information when focused on a task. Even though we know that the brain performs unconscious cognition, where processing happens behind the scenes of consciousness (Kihlstrom 2007), we expect that at least salient objects--a large animal in our path, for example--will consciously capture our attention (Anderson & Donk, 2017).

That’s not always the case, however; the finite amount of information that the human brain can process simply appears larger through multitasking (Rosen 2008).

People often assume that they can multitask very well, since it’s a skill that seems to be in constant use. Using continuous partial attention, information from multiple sources is scanned to pick out relevant details, but not studied in depth (Johnson 2005).

However, to truly process multiple streams of information requires selective attention, where a choice has been made on which stimuli to focus (Koch, Lawo, and Vorländer

2011). When this happens, all other information is filtered out (Neisser & Becklen,

1 1975). It effectively disappears (Moore and Egeth 1997). And while selective attention may be considered to be an effective way to complete a task, there are unexpected consequences—especially for information that does not meet initial criteria deemed relevant to the task (Memmert, 2006). This information that does not make the cut remains unprocessed, and the person becomes oblivious to the filtered-out information, even if it was unusual and within the field of vision (Lamme, 2004). As a result, the brain remains unaware of a salient stimulus, because it is not attending to it (Memmert, 2006).

This inattentional or perceptual blindness is a psychological lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits, yet it has the same result as the viewer having been temporarily blind without consciousness of the condition (Simons and Chabris, 1999). It may be further defined as the event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight (Simons and Chabris, 1999). The popular dancing gorilla experiment illustrates this phenomenon quite well (Simons and

Chabris, 1999).

When stretched to their implications in various scenarios, such as impaired traffic safety because of distracted driving (Redelmeier & Tibshirani, 1997), or falsified eye- witness testimony, the potential societal damage that results from the brain's failure to attend to unexpected stimuli is surprisingly detrimental (FAA 2017).

There is no way to control the constant barrage of information that is constantly happening from every imaginable source--especially when the physical world has been overrun by the new and ever-changing digital paradigm that redefines how many people live. Social media has prevailed as the new normal way to maintain relationships--from messaging applications such as texting, Line, and What's App; to social media platforms

2 such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. But as increasingly more hours are spent on social media, how are people's ability to focus getting affected, if at all? A recent study on the effects of multitasking on academic performance found that using

Facebook and text messaging while studying were negatively correlated to student grades, while online searching and emailing were not (Junco & Cotton, 2012). Certainly, social media is affecting our perception in many facets of life.

This study aims to explore the way that social media influences what we see—or in this case, what we miss in plain sight. Through a combination of self-response surveys and an inattentional blindness video test, we determine what people are processing visually, particularly after spending time on social media, which is rich with pictures, stories, news, and links--all of which, together, can tax cognitive resources. We asked participants to complete a survey and an online task which involves counting the number of actions that appear in a video. This video had unexpected stimuli in it, and we asked people to indicate whether they saw anything unusual in the video.

Findings provide initial evidence that exposure to social media exacerbates inattentional blindness. This study also begins to answer a series of follow-up questions.

For instance, if attention is affected by social media, what's good or bad about that shift?

3 Definition of Terms

Akratic: the state of mind in which a person acts against their better judgment through weakness of will. The adjectival form is 'akratic.' In other words, if one determines that Action A is the best course of action, but does Action B anyway.

Inattentional Blindness: a lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits. It may be further defined as the event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight.

Change Blindness: when someone fails to notice a change, from the previous state to the current state, in the environment.

Cognition: how a person understands the world and acts within it.

Cognitive bias: the systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.

Cognitive capture: also known as cognitive tunneling, is an inattentional blindness phenomenon in which the observer is too focused on instrumentation, task at hand, internal thought, etc. and not on the present environment. For example, while driving, a driver focused on the speedometer and not on the road is suffering from cognitive capture.

Cognitive failures: minor errors in thinking reported by clinical and non- clinical individuals during everyday life.

Cognitive Failures Questionnaire: a test to determine the frequency in which people experience cognitive failures in everyday life. The test rates three different factors: forgetfulness (a tendency to let go from one's mind something known or planned, for example, names, intentions, appointments, and words), distractibility (mainly in social situations or interactions with other people such as being absentminded or easily disturbed in one's focused attention), and false triggering (interrupted processing of sequences of cognitive and motor actions).

4 Cognitive load: the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory.

Conspicuity: an object’s ability to catch a person’s attention.

Creativity: cognitive flexibility and the ability to find remote associations. It is thought to emerge when the discovery of a hidden pattern of insight emerges from existing information that otherwise depicts a different (and often more complicated) picture.

Decision fatigue: the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making. It is now understood as one of the causes of irrational trade-offs in decision-making.

Divergent thinking: a form of creativity and creative thinking. It is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, 'non-linear' manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion.

Divided (or partial) attention: our brain's ability to attend to two different stimuli at the same time, and respond to the multiple demands of your surroundings. Divided attention is a type of simultaneous attention that allows us to process different information sources and successfully carry out multiple tasks at a time.

Endogenous cue: internalized, internal knowledge of the cue and the intention to follow it. Examples include your name, because you know what it means; and a street sign with an arrow: you know what to do when you see it; otherwise, it would look just like a random line.

Exogenous cue: signal from external sources. Salient visual cues are an example of this.

Focused attention: the brain’s ability to concentrate its attention on a target stimulus for any period of time. This type of attention makes it possible to quickly detect relevant stimuli.

5 Gestalt theory: translating from German to mean 'unified whole,' it is a theory of visual processing to describe how people organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes. Common elements could include shape, color, and form.

Introspection illusion: a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable.

Mechanical Turk: a tool from Amazon in which respondents answer questions and take tests online in exchange for a small fee. Theoretically, a large change results from small requests from a large number of participants.

Mueller-Lyon illusion: an illusion where two lines of the same length are viewed in a vertical stack. However, one line has an angled arrowhead pointing outward, while the other has the angled arrowhead pointing inward. Because of the direction of the arrowheads, one line appears longer than the other.

Salient stimuli: noticeable or important. In this case, a visual cue that is unusual within the context of the rest of the view, and therefore more likely to be noticed.

Selective looking: An action that occurs when participants are attending to a subset of visual targets or events and ignoring irrelevant distractors, they often fail to detect the appearance of an unexpected visual object or event even when the object is visible for several seconds (“sustained inattentional blindness”).

Unconscious cognition: the processing of perception, memory, learning, thought, and language without being aware of it

Visual perception: the ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by the objects in the environment.

Selective attention: the capacity for or process of reacting to certain stimuli selectively when several occur simultaneously.

Social media: forms of online communication in which people visit, view information from other users, and participate by either posting their own content, or more passively viewing links to others content, including imagery, video, quizzes, and text.

6 The media this definition include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube, and texting.

The Question

As people spend increasingly more hours on social media (Pew 2016), how are people's ability to focus getting affected, if at all? And if it is being affected, what's good or bad about that shift?

This study aims to answer, broadly: does social media use affect attention? If so, how? In the quest to find an answer, we look at specific social media usage markers to see if changes in that usage affect inattentional blindness in study participants.

Specifically, we aspire to find out whether increased social media use exacerbates inattentional blindness; the main hypothesis is that it does. The perceptual model (Figure

1) below outlines the chain of behavior from social media to inattentional blindness.

Figure 1: Process of Social Media Usage Effect on Inattentional Blindness

Cognitive Inattentional Social Media Use Tasks Focus Load Blindness Increases Increase Weakens Increases Increases

Alternative Hypotheses

With the model above of cause and effect in mind, this thesis aims to determine whether increased social media use weakens, strengthens, or has no discernible effect on the phenomenon of inattentional blindness. One alternative outcome is that increased social media use weakens inattentional blindness, though there is no a priori research to support this. Another alternative outcome is that increased social media use has no effect

7 on inattentional blindness, because inattentional blindness is something that is engrained in the human condition: humans will always make a choice on what to focus on, thereby choosing to ignore other stimuli. This will continue to happen, regardless of social media use.

Additional questions arise from this line of inquiry. If social media is dividing our attention and thereby increasing our cognitive load, is it also increasing decision fatigue?

Or is it an activity that one quickly forgets, and would have no effect on a participant's performance regarding attention and distraction? And if social media is more of a leisurely pastime, is there still a lingering effect from processing so much new stimuli online that affects performance in concentration on subsequent tasks?

To answer the question and confirm our hypothesis, it is necessary to review background research in the fields of attention, conscious processing, and social media.

Background of the Problem

When speaking about the importance of paying attention in life, Harvard-trained

American physician, philosopher, and psychologist William James may have said it best:

"My experience is what I attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind – without selective interest, experience is utter chaos." (James, 1890). The most obvious tool of noticing by the human brain is the eye--so much so that at least 30% of the cortex is dedicated to the processing of information sent by it (Wandell, 1995). However, the eye is not a camera, but more of a spotlight. Inattentional or perceptual blindness, a term coined about 25 years ago (Mack and Rock, 1992), occurs when an individual fails to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight (Simons and Chabris, 1999). The

8 relationship between the eye and the brain, though both are part of the central nervous system (CNS), is interestingly complex (Broadbent DE. 1958).

The eye does not relay all of the information it looks at, and the brain does not process visual stimuli in an expected way (Broadbent DE. 1958). In instances where patients with primary visual cortex damage have blind areas in their visual field, they can nonetheless reliably 'guess' about features of the stimulus, including location, motion, and direction (Block, 1995). Essentially, these patients could still see, despite anatomical damage and belief that they could not see consciously (Block, 1995).

Conscious processing can affect the way a visual stimulus is understood in another way, too. For example, in a study that employs the Gestalt theory, participants were asked to describe which of two lines were longer, similar to the Ponzo illusion

(Figure 2); in this case, however, the lines had additional dots in the background (Moore

& Egeth, 1997). While participants couldn't accurately recall the patterns of the dots, their mere presence affected response accuracy on the line length, showing that Gestalt grouping occurs without attention, but the patterns formed from the grouping may not be encoded in memory without attention (Moore & Egeth, 1997).

Figure 2: The Ponzo Illusion and Ponzo-Based Pattern-Matrix Experiments

The Ponzo illusion (Figure 2, left) shows two parallel lines that are the same length, but the one that is closer to the converging end of two converging lines appears to be longer than the parallel line that is closer to the diverging end. In the experiment (Figure 2, center and right), participants were asked to confirm line length, and later, the pattern of the dots. Source: Moore & Egeth, 1997.

On the other end of the viewing spectrum, viewers may look, or even fixate, on an object in the foreground for an extended period of time—but without attention directed to it, there is no recall (Mack, 2003). This underscores the idea that without attention directed to a stimulus, it is not actually seen (Mack, 2003). There is indeed a complex dance between the eye, the visual cortex, and consciousness (Mack, 2003).

And so, consciousness is an interesting complicator in the field of vision processing, resulting in some people who don't think they can see, but actually can; and others who think they can see, actually don’t (Mack, 2003). Rather than an akratic process, the brain processes selectively processes what the eye can see at any given time, and when there is high cognitive load from many demands or multitasking, then there is a certain blindness effect that results in individuals' bewilderment at the prospect of missing something unusual that was in plain view (Simons and Chabris, 1999).

The popular study of Simon and Chabris, revised from the earlier demonstration by Ulric Neisser, Neisser and Becklen in 1975, demonstrated inattentional blindness in action, when they asked participants whether or not they noticed a gorilla walking through the scene of a video in which they were tasked with counting an act in a game

(Simons and Chabris, 1999).

10 Similarly, a follow-up study looked at a computer game, where participants were asked to identify the shapes on the screen, counting the number of varying objects unified by color and shape (Carpenter 2001). A red cross, which stood out blatantly from the stimuli that participants were asked to identify, appeared on the screen (Carpenter 2001).

About a third of participants did indeed miss it (Carpenter 2001). Ultimately, this study showed that inattentional blindness may increase if the unexpected stimuli resembles either the environment or another foreground element that a person has been tasked to ignore (Carpenter 2001). This was confirmed in a later study that showed that the more similar an unexpected stimulus is to the attended objects and the greater its difference from the ignored items, the more likely the item is going to be noticed (Most et al, 2001).

Most studies point to the overload of working memory as a main cause for inattentional blindness (Bredemeier, Simons, 2012). The prior two studies above gave the participants specific tasks to attend to; normally, this translated to counting the number of times that something happened (Most et al, 2001). Similar to remembering a phone number for five minutes without committing it to long-term memory, the brain becomes consumed and taxed with its task (Bredemeier et al, 2012). As a result, an unexpected stimulus can sneak through unnoticed (Most et al, 2001).

While it appears that there have not been trends in higher incidents of the phenomenon when considering ethnicity, intelligence, or income, recent studies have determined that there may be a positive correlation with age and an increase in inattentional blindness (Graham and Burke, 2011). Similarly, there is a correlative effective between expertise and attentional salience (Seegmiller, 2011). For example, a person who is fluent in a second language would not have to pay as much attention to the

11 words in a conversation, but another who is just learning the same language may be painfully attuned to the syllables that still sound foreign and unintelligible to them

(Seegmiller, 2011). As a result, the new language learner is more cognitively taxed than the fluent speaker, and is more likely to miss other things while focused on formulating words (Seegmiller, 2011).

There is a new factor that competes for the attention of the human brain like nothing else we've seen in the recent past: social media. As shown in figure 3, social media sites and usage are on the rise. While other forms of entertainment, such as television, can certainly captivate viewers for hours at a time, the immediacy and variety in which people can actively communicate with each other now is different from past forms of media (Pew 2016). Further, the asynchronous nature of the medium, in which viewers can follow multiple paths of any snippet of information they want, is also unprecedented (Pew 2016).

Figure 3: Average Daily Time Spent on Social Media from 2012 to 2016 for Internet

Users Aged 16-64

Data source (GlobalWebIndex 2012-2016)

Interestingly, there are instances when inattentional awareness is shown to be a coping mechanism to navigate in an increasingly information-rich world. When viewing search results online, many people develop 'banner blindness,' where they do not process the ads on the screen, because users do not want to be sold anything they’re not looking to buy (de Ternay, 2016). This action is generally seen as a positive behavior in inattentional blindness, born from a premeditated and willful desire to ignore specific unwanted stimuli—and the negative consequences are low (de Ternay, 2016).

Social media is thought to have a shortening effect on the human attention span.

In 2013, the average attention span was eight seconds, which is less than the 9-second span of a goldfish (Zafarani and Liu, 2014). Along these lines, an experiment was performed in which cell phones were analyzed for their effect on attentional blindness

13 while engaged in mobility tasks (Hyman et al 2010). The unexpected stimulus was a clown on a bicycle in conspicuous colors (Hyman et al 2010). Individuals, who were divided into four groups: talking on the phone, listening to a digital music player, walking by themselves, or walking in pairs, resulted in a predictable manner (Hyman et al 2010).

Individuals engaged in talking on the cell phone were the least likely to notice the clown

(Hyman et al 2010).

As the number of social media channels proliferate, so do the choices with which a person must make to spend their time (Zafarani & Liu, 2014). As a result, the sites that divide attention must further divide the sliver of attention amongst themselves, creating even more distraction (Zafarani & Liu, 2014).

Defining Inattention

To understand how inattentional blindness occurs, it is necessary to first understand its components. Inattention is the absence of attention, which is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether deemed subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information.

(Broadbent DE 1958). Most of our perceptual processing occurs outside of conscious awareness (Badgaiyan 2012). Our senses are bombarded with such a large amount of input, such as sights, sounds, and smells, that our minds cannot fully process it all

(Badgaiyan 2012). The overload becomes even worse when we recall information from memory and engage in deep thought (Schacter & Badgaiyan, 2001).

To cope with the problem, we have evolved a mechanism called attention, which modulates most conscious cognitive processing (Badgaiyan 2016). Most, but not all,

14 nonconscious processing is attention dependent (Badgaiyan 2016). Attention acts as a filter that quickly examines sensory input and selects a small percentage for full processing and for conscious perception (Schacter & Badgaiyan, 2001). Without reaching consciousness, the remaining information is lost, unnoticed and unremembered

(Memmert 2006). This processing happens without conscious control (Moore & Egeth,

1997).

Defining Inattentional Blindness

Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is the failure to notice an unexpected object when attention is focused elsewhere (Mack & Rock, 1998). When it becomes impossible for one to attend to all the stimuli in a given situation, a temporary blindness effect can take place, where individuals fail to see objects or stimuli that are unexpected, salient, or both. (Simons & Chabris, 1998).

Studies suggest that inattentional blindness is affected by four factors: expectation, conspicuity, capacity, mental workload and task interference (Baron-Cohen

1995). To classify an event as an inattentional blindness episode, four criteria must be met: 1) the observer must fail to notice a visual object or event, 2) the object or event must be fully visible, 3) observers must be able to readily identify the object if they are consciously perceiving it, and 4) the event must be unexpected and the failure to see the object or event must be due to the engagement of attention on other aspects of the visual scene and not due to aspects of the visual stimulus itself (Mack & Rock, 1998).

What follows are the four factors of inattentional blindness, explored in more depth.

Inattentional Blindness Factors: Expectation

If attention is directed by conscious attention, then inattentional blindness can also be defined by a lack of expectation for the unattended stimulus (Mack 2001). Testing for inattentional blindness is not about misdirecting attention or failure of attentional capture, but rather the expectation of the presence of a stimulus, whether visual or otherwise

(Braun 2001). Once observers are made aware of the importance of the stimuli to be presented, by stating that there will be a test, for example, the phenomenon largely disappears (Mack 1998). However, expectation does not seem to ameliorate the effects of closely related phenomena like change blindness, where participants have difficulty identifying the changing object even when they are explicitly told to look for it (Mack

2001).

Past experience exerts a strong control on attention, because it teaches us what is and isn't relevant (White & Davies, 2008). If nothing new ever happens in repeated instances of a situation, then attention filters away the repeated experience to conserve mental processing (Horstmann and Ansorge, 2016). Errors often occur when there is a novel and unusual combination of circumstances in a highly familiar circumstance

(Becklen & Cervone, 1983).

Inattentional Blindness Factors: Conspicuity

If a stimulus isn’t conspicuous, it is more likely to escape attention capture. The effects of inattentional blindness decrease with conspicuity, which are defined by two

16 factors: sensory and cognitive (Grissinger 2012). Sensory conspicuity relates to the physical properties of an object (Koivisto 2004). Bright colors, bold patterns, flashing lights, and high contrast are visual elements that would lead to an object leaping to the forefront of attention more quickly than objects that do not have these properties (Folk et al, 1994). While the most important sensory factor is contrast (Green 2004), luminance or brightness contrast is more important than color contrast (FAA 2012). Objects are seen not because of their absolute brightness, but rather because of their contrast with the background (Green 2004). Objects that move, flash, or flicker are more likely to be noticed (Folk et al 1992). This is a matter of public safety: school buses, police cars, ambulances, and railroad crossings all use flickering light (FAA 2014). Black cars are involved in many more accidents, presumably because they are more difficult to notice at night (FAA 2014).

Cognitive conspicuity relates to factors that are familiar or have meaning to a person. One example is the cocktail party phenomenon, which is the ability of an individual to focus auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out the multiple streams of conversation in the room (Getzmann and Falkenstein, 2016).

Research shows that people are permanently primed to detect personally meaningful words, like names, and may require less perceptual information than other words to trigger identification and attention (Driver 2001). Although observers typically notice their own name or a smiling face even when unexpected, they do not tend to notice their own name if one letter is changed (Rubin and Hua 1998).

17 Inattentional Blindness Factors: Capacity

Attentional capacity varies from person to person and time to time; it is influenced by age, mental aptitude, fatigue, and drugs and alcohol use (Green 2012).

Under these conditions, the likelihood of noticing important events declines (Green

2012). Attentional capacity can also be a function of experience (Beanland & Chan

2016).

Inattentional blindness oversights, such as traffic accidents, are usually caused by a combination of factors: low conspicuity, divided attention and high expectation or lower arousal (Moore & Egeth, 1997). In any specific situation, an accident could be due to any or all (Moore & Egeth, 1997). For example, a skilled airline pilot, who is flying aircraft that is very similar, but not identical, to the one he usually flew, may make an automatic decision with disastrous results (FAA 2014). He may flip a switch to cut the fuel supply, but mistakenly flip the wrong switch because it’s in a new location in the new plane she is in (FAA 2014). A beginner, meanwhile, would be less likely to make the error, because he would have to think about the switch and read the settings first

(FAA 2014). A beginner might make a "rule-based error" (what rule to follow in a particular situation) but not a "skill-based error" (Moore & Egeth, 1997).

Since humans have a limited mental capacity that is incapable of attending to the barrage of sensory inputs, inattentional blindness could be considered to be a helpful evolutionary mechanism that helps filter out irrelevant input, allowing only important information to reach consciousness (Canadian Aviation Maintenance Council, 2002).

Inattentional Blindness Factors: Mental Workload and Task Interference

18 Since attention is roughly fixed, the more attention we focus on one task, the less there is for others (Rattan & Eberhardt 2010). Inattentional blindness can absorb our attention capacity because our attention is partly allocated to some secondary task, such as using a cell phone, tuning the radio, or carrying on a conversation with a passenger

(Green 2001). Any presence of mental workload, even when just as simple as thinking about what to make for dinner, can also reduce available attention (Horrey & Simons

2007). Research shows that each sensory modality—sight and sound, for example— function conjointly, which means that information streams that affect different senses can affect our perception (Driver & Spence, 2004). Reliance on technology, and the advent of technology as a major influence in all aspects of life, has lessened our abilities to notice things out of the ordinary (Green 2004).

Conversely, inattentional blindness can also be caused by too little mental load, or boredom (Angier 2008). In a monitoring task, where the chance of an important event unfolding is low, people become bored, and they cease paying close attention (Most et al,

2005). Arousal level drops and attention wanders (Angier 2008). People may also go on

"autopilot" when performing highly practiced tasks, such as driving. Because people also engage in social media when they are bored (Pew 2016), the same effects of inattentional blindness can take effect. As one aviation authority said, "The burning question of the near future will not be how much work a man can do safely, but how little" (Oborne &

Levis, 1980).

19 Chapter II

Materials and Methods

This study investigated the relationship between time spent on social media and the brain's ability to observe unexpected stimuli while attending to a task. By conducting the study through online means, we are able to obtain a larger and more heterogeneous sample, faster data collection, and reduced overall costs (Buhrmester et al, 2001). By using data from the survey, this study looked for correlations between inattentional blindness and social media use. Below are the elements of the research design and logic that built this study.

Study Protocol: Variables

We recruited 55 participants to answer an online survey, view a video, and answer subsequent questions. For the purposes of our study, we classified the independent variable as participants’ social media use because we theorized that this is what affects inattentional blindness. In the two analyses performed in this study, we identified social media use to be measured in one of two ways: (1) the number of social media accounts they had, or (2) how often they checked their accounts.

To measure attention, we defined the dependent variables as the number of unexpected salient stimuli they had noticed in the video, of which there were three.

Viewers could name any number of unexpected stimuli in the video: one, two, three, or none.

20 Study Protocol: Online Collection through MTurk

Interested participants were provided with an online link to the survey through

Mechanical Turk (Mturk), which has been used to gather a diverse body of responses

(Stothart, Boot, Simons 2015). Mturk is a process that gathers specific information from many different types of people in an efficient and effective way (Buhrmester, M, Kwang,

T and Gosling, SD 2001). Participants first gave consent through an online consent form, which informed the individuals about the general purpose of the study, the tasks they would complete in the survey, the total duration of the survey, and the confidentiality of their responses. Following consent, participants were then redirected to complete a demographic and background questionnaire. Next, participants were redirected to

Typeform from Mturk, where they completed an online version of the cognitive failures questionnaire. Each participant took approximately 15 minutes to complete the study protocol and was paid $2 (USD) via Mturk.

Study Protocol: Participants

First, participants were asked to fill out a survey to collect demographic data, such as age (table 1) and gender (table 2). Out of all age breakdowns, there are more representatives from the 25-34 cohort (table 1). The balance of gender broke down evenly, with 49% of participants reporting as female, and 51% of participants reporting as male; no participants reported any other gender identification (table 2). They were also asked to provide information on their usage patterns, content sharing, frequency, and device use of social media.

Table 1: Age of Participants

Table 2: Gender of Participants

Gender Female Male Other

Number 27 28 0 Percentage 49% 51% 0

Study Protocol: Social Media Survey

Participants were asked about their social media usage habits and behaviors. They were asked how many social media accounts they had, so that we could get a sense of how much time they invest on social media. Most importantly, we wanted a variable that represented how much time they spent switching from one account to another, which would enhance distractibility.

We also asked how often they checked their social media accounts, to understand their usage patterns. Those who checked their social media accounts more than once an hour or day would be categorized as high social media users, versus those who checked their accounts less than once a week or month.

They were also asked which social media platform they used the most, and what they used social media for. These questions helped to provide a clearer picture of their online habits, and how they spend the majority of their time online.

Study Protocol: Online Survey for Inattentional Blindness

To detect levels of inattentional blindness, we used a video that had a specific task

22 required of the viewer, as well as unexpected stimuli that appeared briefly throughout its duration. We asked viewers a series of questions about what they saw in the video.

Namely, they were asked to count the number of passes between players on one team, while ignoring the simultaneous passes by the other team. At the conclusion of the clip, participants were required to enter the number of passes they counted. They were also asked to name whether any unusual occurrences happened during the course of the video without providing any specific prompts to guide their answers.

This video, called Monkey Business and created in 2010, is a lesser known rendition of the 2007 Invisible Gorilla video by Daniel Simons. This newer video was used to mitigate the potential issue of viewers who may have already seen the original

Invisible Gorilla video, expected the surprise stimulus, and skewed the results. In prior findings, for those that hadn’t seen the video, about half miss the unexpected changes

(Simons and Chabris, 2010).

The three unexpected stimuli in Monkey Business were not identified for participants, so that viewers would have to name them unprompted in this study, just as they had in prior viewings of the study conducted by Simons and Chabris. The unidentified stimuli in this video were: a person dressed as a gorilla walking through the scene, a player walking off the set, and the background curtains repeatedly changing colors (Simons and Chabris, 2010). Stills of the inattentional blindness videos are below.

23 Figure 4: Original Invisible Gorilla Video by Daniel Simons

Figure 5: Daniel Simons Monkey Business Illusion Video View 1

Figure 6: Daniel Simons Monkey Business Illusion Video View 2

25 III.

Results

To determine whether social media use had a significant effect on the ability to attend to unexpected salient events in the video, we performed two analyses: Analysis I and II.

Analysis I

The first analysis used ordinal regression to predict the number of unexpected events observed from the social media check-in frequency variable, while controlling for age and gender. Overall, this model was not significant, χ2 (3) = 1.979, p = .577 (Table

3).

Table 3: Model Fitting Information of Analysis I

Specifically, social media checking frequency did not contribute significantly to the model, B = .495, p=.357 (Table XI), nor did the covariates (age: p = .279; gender: p =

.456).

Table 4: Parameter Estimates of Analysis I

Analysis II

For our next analysis, we continued to use an ordinal regression. However, instead of looking at how often participants checked their social media accounts, we focused on how many social media channels they have. This approach tested the hypothesis that the number of social media accounts could signal a high baseline distractibility, and predict their ability to observe the unexpected salient events.

In light of the findings of our first analysis, we also adjusted our approach to the covariates. Gender was dropped from this model because it did not contribute significantly to the first model, and because we have no strong a priori basis for its inclusion. On the other hand, age was retained as the sole covariate. While not significant in the prior model, it yielded a strong negative trend, and this supports prior research that divided attention and attention switching declines with age (Glisky 2007).

Overall, this model yielded a significant fit to the data, χ2 (2) = 6.502, p < .05

(Table 5).

Table 5: Model Fitting Information of Analysis II

Specifically, there was a significant contribution in the number of social media channels in the negative direction, B = -.543, p=.037 (Table XIII). Age remained a non-

27 significant covariate, B = -.196, p = .542. However, it trended in the expected direction, indicating decreasing performance with age.

Table 6: Parameter Estimates of Analysis II

Participant Performance Results

In addition to the ordinal regression, we reviewed the overall performance results of the individual participants.

Participant Performance Results: Age

While not significant, the model did show that inattentional blindness worsens with age, confirming prior research (Horwood & Beanland, 2016). When looking at the individual participant data, results were mixed. Of the various age groups, the 35-44 age cohort performed best with 53.85% of them seeing the gorilla (Table 7). The age 18-24 cohort performed well, with 50% of them noticing the salient stimuli (Table 7). The groups aged 55-64 performed the worst, with no one seeing the sighting. The group aged

25-34 performed markedly poorer than the group immediately younger and older than it, and the group 45-54 performed better than this group (Table 7).

28 Number Who Saw the Percentage Who Saw Age Group Gorilla Gorilla 18-24 4 50.00% 25-34 27 29.63% 35-44 13 53.85% 45-54 5 40.00% 55-64 3 0.00%

Table 7: Inattentional Blindness Test Performance by Age Range

Participant Performance Results: Overall Inattentional Blindness

The overall results of this study show that the majority of participants did not pass the inattentional blindness test. Only 34.5% of participants saw the gorilla (Table 8), which is lower than the number of participants reported in the original study by Simons, which was less than half (Simons 2010). One person noticed that one player left the game, and no one noticed the curtain color change, which were the other two of the three inattentional blindness tests (Table 8).

In terms of the explicit task, only 32.7% of participants correctly counted sixteen as the number of passes in the game (Table 9). The majority of responses were incorrect;

65.5% of all respondents entered a different number than sixteen, or no number at all

(Table 12).

Participant Performance Results: Color and Motion

Since it is possible that participants had already seen the Gorilla video, and would have been able to anticipate the gorilla appearance, it is important to note if anyone had seen the other two unexpected stimuli: the color of the curtains changing and the player

29 leaving the game (Table 8). In this regard, performance was even worse; only one person noticed that one of the players left the game. No one reported the change in the background color of the video (Table 8).

Saw the Gorilla Saw a Player Leave Saw the Curtains Change Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage All Respondents 55 19 34.5% 1 1.8% 0 0.0% High Social Media Users 18 4 22.2% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%

Table 8: Participant Reports on Inattentional Blindness Test

Participant Performance Results: High Social Media Users

To determine the effect of social media use on inattentional blindness, the study focused on the performance of frequent social media users, who comprised 32.7% of the sample (Table 9). These participants were those who reported checking social media at least once every hour. This group showed high inattentional blindness and fared poorly on the explicit task: only 22.2% of these participants saw the gorilla, and 22.2% counted the correct number of passes (Table 9). Only 5.6% of participants were able to count the correct number of passes, and also see the gorilla, compared to 14.5% of all participants

(Table 9). None of these players reported seeing either the other two unexpected stimuli, including the background changing color or the player leaving the game (Table 9).

Participant Performance Results: Social Media Use Overall

Facebook is the top application used by participants, with 67% of participants reporting it to be the top application used (figure 3). This reflects the reports of national

30 research, where 79% of all online adults and 68% of all Americans use Facebook as their top online application (Pew 2016).

Figure 7: Social Network Usage: Top Application as Selected by Participants

While 33% of respondents reported checking their social media channels at least every hour, the majority of people were more disciplined, checking in less—at least every day (figure 8). Of all the devices possible, the majority of respondents used their smartphone the most (figure 9). Pictures was the most popular form of content shared, followed by news articles and status updates (figure 10).

31 Figure 8: Frequency that Participants Report Checking Their Social Media

Figure 9: Devices that Participants Report Using Most to Check Their Social Media

Figure 10: Types of Content That Participants Report Sharing the Most on Social Media

32 IV.

Discussion Overview

The purpose of this study was to determine whether social media worsens the effects of inattentional blindness on perception, using self-reported responses on social media use, and performance in an inattentional blindness test. Looking at these variables, this study aimed to find a relationship. The findings from this study provide initial evidence that social media does indeed play a role in the exacerbation of inattentional blindness.

Certainly, participants who had correctly counted the explicit task—the number of passes—may have thought they needed to focus on the task at hand, and filter out anything else, which is a phenomenon known in the field of advertising, where people block out the processing of information that may be seen as extraneous (de Ternay,

Guerric 2016).

The analysis of performance in the inattentional blindness test shows that participants who are high social media users performed comparatively worse than their counterparts who reported lower social media usage. They not only fared worse in identifying the unexpected stimulus, but they also provided fewer accurate responses when performing the task to assess conscious attention. This confirms the findings that distraction increases with the usage of social media (Zafarani & Liu 2014).

Age does appear to be more than a number. While not significant, the data did confirm prior findings which show that older subjects report higher incidents of inattentional blindness (Graham and Burke 2011 and Horwood and Beanland, 2016).

33 Inferences on Divided Attention in Social Media

Ultimately, social media use does appear to heighten the effects of inattentional blindness, confirming the literature review of prior research in the Background section of this paper. While the number of times that participants checked did not appear to correlate to attention, the number of accounts did. The more accounts a participant had, the more likely they were to miss unexpected stimuli. Why might this be the case?

One explanation involves the behavioral result from divided attention. Prior research shows that inattentional blindness is caused by a combination of factors including divided attention (Moore & Egeth, 1997), which this study confirms. More social media accounts to manage means more streams of simultaneous stimuli to process and respond to, which allocates attention away from any stimuli that is outside of the social media channel (Green 2001).

The more often that a person proceeds to log into, use, and log out of an account, the more information they have to process. This additional information adds to the cognitive task load that, according to prior research reviewed in this paper, distracts a person more from stimuli that is deemed unnecessary to the tasks that the user is performing. Essentially, the person is perpetually busy. This mental workload reduces available attention, since processing is reducing available attention for unexpected events

(Horrey & Simons 2007).

Task switching has a cognitive cost as well. Each time a person goes to a new account, they need to follow a series of steps: locate the program on their device, click on it, log in, process the new information presented to the user (because social media is, by its very essence, always updating to reflect the current conversations had by others on the

34 network), react, respond, wait for others to do the same, scroll for new content, and eventually, log out. For every social media network, these steps multiply for the user, absorbing their time and cognitive resources.

Furthermore, every network has a unique user interface, which takes time to acclimate to—even if negligible, it’s still present. Facebook’s navigational interface, with a mixture of photos, autoplay videos, and dense stories, is very different from

Twitter’s constant stream of text-based updates that refreshes more than once every second (Figures 11 & 12). In turn, this is very different from the hidden navigation on

Snapchat, or the nine-box image grid on Instagram (Figures 13 & 14). The need to quickly process changing content on just one social media platform will certainly tax the brains of users; switching from multiple platforms will only exacerbate that effort.

Another possibility lies in the other end of the spectrum, where it’s a low cognitive load that exacerbates inattentional blindness. Social media constantly refreshes itself with new content, with a constant stream of novel items to keep someone interested in the platform. When a person doesn’t find anything immediately interesting on the platform, or is no longer looking at social media, they may become bored; research has also shown this to be a risk factor in increasing inattentional blindness (Angier, 2008).

When people are bored, they cease paying close attention, because they do not expect anything interesting to happen (Most et al, 2005).

Figure 11: Twitter homepage on a laptop screen

Figure 12: Facebook homepage on a laptop view

Figure 13: Typical Instagram screen in its native environment: on a mobile device

Figure14: Typical Snapchat screen in its native environment: on a mobile device

Inferences on Unexpected Stimuli & Color

One surprising result was that no one noticed the color change in the background of the video. Color has been isolated in prior experiments to determine its effect in

38 inattentional and change blindness (Rensink, O'Regan, & Clark, 1997; O'Regan, Rensink,

& Clark, 1999; Simons & Levin, 1997; Rensink, 2000).

Unexpected objects with colors similar to the attended set in color space are more likely to be noticed, while those with colors close to the ignored ones are missed (Drew

& Stothart, 2016). Certainly, the background curtain in the video is a different color than that which is involved in the attention set (the team wearing white). The colors of the curtain are both vibrant shades, which would lead them to have some conspicuity.

Interestingly, the types of unexpected stimuli are worth noting: the change in curtain involved color, but not motion in the video (Simons 2010). The movement of the gorilla involves motion above all other salient elements, which some participants saw

(Table 4). The lack of motion may help to explain why no one saw the color change

(Carpenter, Siri 2001).

It is also worth noting that the color shift is more directly an issue of change blindness, rather than inattentional blindness (Driver 1998). In this case, viewers failed to notice the different color from one moment to the next in the image (Driver 1998). This failure to perceive has been considered to be more of an issue with memory than with pure perception (Driver 1998).

Inferences on Overall Performance: Conscious and Divergent Participants

Respondents who guessed the correct number of passes, but did not see the gorilla or any other unexpected stimuli may be considered to be the more conscientious respondents: they performed the task they were told to complete, even though they did not escape the effects of inattentional blindness. Of all respondents, 18.2% guessed the

39 correct number of passes but did not see the gorilla, compared with 16.7% of high social media users in the study (Table 9).

All Respondents 55 High Social Media Users 18 Percentage of High Social Media Users 32.7% versus Overall Sample

Table 7: Participants Who Are High Social Media Users

The least conscientious group would be those who neither guessed the correct number of passes, nor saw any of the unexpected stimuli. In this regard, 47.3% of all respondents and 55.6% of high social media users failed to complete the task or notice anything out of the ordinary (Table 10).

Those who saw the gorilla or any unexpected stimuli, yet did not guess the correct number of passes, may be considered to be the most divergent thinkers, in that they were open to new information. Of all respondents, 20% saw the gorilla but guessed the incorrect number of passes, as well as 22.2% of high social media users (Table 11).

Table 8: Participants Who See the Gorilla and Guess the Number of Passes

Table 9: Participants Who See No Gorilla and Guess the Number of Passes

Table 10: Participants Who See No Gorilla and Guess the Incorrect Number of Passes

Incorrect Passes Saw the Gorilla Incorrect Passes, Saw the Gorilla Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage All Respondents 55 37 67.3% 19 34.5% 11 20.0% High Social Media Users 18 14 77.8% 4 22.2% 4 22.2%

Table 11: Participants Who See the Gorilla and Guess the Incorrect Number of Passes

Future Directions

Improvements to the Current Study

There were a handful of limitations in this study that are unavoidable. One limitation is the number of participants in the study. While the initial goal of 50 people had been reached, this number could be increased in future studies to get a statistically significant sample, especially when the subgroup variables of age, gender, social media usage, and attention-based answers are analyzed. In future iterations of the study, the number of subjects could be increased to determine whether findings are replicable with a statistically significant number of participants.

41 The second limitation results from the media in which the study lives. Because this study is conducted primarily online, there are some limitations in the fidelity of information we expect to have. Theoretically, participants may not be truthful in their answers.

Since we are asking people to self-assess themselves, we may not get accurate answers from participants’ self-assessments on their own distractibility, social media use, or cognitive failures. Subjects did know that the test information is confidential and anonymous at an individual level, so it is likely that we have gleaned the most truthful answers possible under the circumstances.

Also, the gorilla experiment video series is mildly familiar to certain people. The inattentional blindness video can be changed to ensure that no one had ever seen the content. This would confirm that the stimulus is unexpected for viewers, and avoid the possibility that participants would anticipate the stimulus in the video. Given that this study resulted in poorer performance than the averages of similar studies conducted by

Simons, it appears that this issue was not necessarily a factor. If viewers anticipated the stimulus, then overall performance would be higher.

Eliminating anyone who had previously participated in an inattentional blindness experiment from the Simons laboratory or their collaborators would also help (Wood &

Simons, 2013). Checking worker IDs against a TurkGate database of prior subjects could also ensure that subjects would not be able to preview surveys, or access multiple surveys in the same group (Goldin & Darlow, 2013). These precautions would help to protect the integrity of the data.

42 Potential Follow-up Study I

Another study could consider whether participants consider themselves distracted already, or quite focused. If we could understand where people fail in minor mistakes, we could establish a baseline spectrum of expected behavior (Wallace et al. 2008). This could be a good proxy for behavior that’s not just online or on social media.

To determine baseline distractibility, participants could take the Cognitive

Failures Questionnaire, or CFQ (Broadbent et al, 1982). The CFQ is a 25-item self-report questionnaire assessing failures in perception, memory, and motor function in the completion of everyday tasks in the past six months. Individuals are asked to rate the frequency experiences and behaviors on a 5-point scale: 0-Never, 1-Very rarely, 2-

Ocassionally, 3-Often, 4-Very often (Broadbent et al, 1982).

The test rates the results on three different factors: forgetfulness (a tendency to let go from one's mind something known or planned, for example, names, intentions, appointments, and words), distractibility (mainly in social situations or interactions with other people such as being absentminded or easily disturbed in one's focused attention), and false triggering (interrupted processing of sequences of cognitive and motor actions)

(Rast et al. 2008).

This test helps us to establish a resting baseline of participants' awareness of their distractibility; do they find that they're quite focused, or scattered in their everyday life?

Inattentional blindness occurs when the person is not aware that they're not seeing something salient, so plotting the results of an inattentional blindness test versus their prior awareness of their own fallibility is an interesting data point.

43 We could create employ a regression model to determine the average CFQ from four data points. The first data point could be whether the respondent saw the gorilla in the inattentional blindness test, which would determine if distractibility in the CFQ is related to inattentional blindness. The second variable could be how often they check social media, to determine a relationship between high social media users and the CFQ score. If participants have a high score on the CFQ and a high reported usage of social media, then correlation if not causality could be inferred. Conversely, scoring low on one test and high on the other, can be a counterpoint to confirm or deny a correlative relationship. The third variable could come from one of the questions in the CFQ: “Do you start doing one thing at home and get distracted (unintentionally)? This specific question deals with distractibility and forgetfulness, which speaks to the theory that inattentional blindness stems from inattentional amnesia, where the respondent would forget what they saw because it wasn’t important to what they were doing (Wolfe 1999).

The fourth data point could be whether Facebook is their top social media channel of choice, because Facebook has the highest amount of information that crosses content types: videos, images, status updates, and trending news. The barrage of information presented by Facebook would also enhance baseline distractibility.

The CFQ test has been given to all participants already, which can be used in a future study. The average scores of all participants on the questions in the CFQ are shown in the table on Table 3. They ranged from 1.84 for the question “Do you bump into people?” to a high of 3.10 for two questions (Table 4). Questions associated with forgetfulness and distractibility tended to rank highest with the participants (Rast et. al

2008). The first, “Do you daydream when you ought to be listening to something?”

44 relates to distractibility (Broadbent et al, 1982). The second question, which also ranked

3.10 with participants, was “Do you find you can’t quite remember something although it’s on the tip of your tongue?” (Table 4). This question relates to forgetfulness

(Broadbent et al, 1982).

An initial review of the data showed that participants who used Facebook tended to have higher CFQ scores: those who used Facebook the most had an average score of

2.56, versus 2.51 for those who reported that they do not use Facebook (Table 16). This initial finding shows some promise for determining a relationship between distractibility and social media use. Further, it appears that a higher score correlated with a higher number of social media channels used by participants. Since this study showed the number of social media channels is correlated with higher inattentional blindness, there is a possible avenue for further study.

Participants Number Average Score Facebook Users 36 2.558888889 Non-Facebook Users 16 2.505

Table 20: Participant Facebook Use

Potential Follow-up Study II

Eye-tracking studies could also be used to confirm that the salient and unexpected stimulus was in the participants’ foveal field of vision, which could be helpful in determining that the person did in fact look at the stimulus, but did not process it or encode it into memory. This could be useful to determine how a stimulus is processed.

45 Motion and direction are two characteristics that are processed, even with damage to the human eye (Block, 1995). Determining how these factors can come into play, when controlling for other factors such as color and contrast, would be useful. Participants who viewed the Monkey Business Illusion inattentional blindness video did not report noticing that the color of the curtain changed. This could be because the backdrop did not move, but the gorilla did, leading to a more conscious processing of the unexpected stimulus.

Conclusion

Respondents who reported high use of social media did perform more poorly than the other respondents overall, showing a link between social media use and inattentional blindness. Social media can increase the cognitive load and distraction, which poses a performance risk in any task that requires concentration and focus such as driving or writing. People should actively manage their time on social media, rather than aimlessly wandering through content, to reduce cognitive load that lowers mental capacity. From the study results, it appears that choosing fewer platforms to use can help to mitigate social media’s deleterious effects on attention.

46 Appendix

Figure 11: View of participant survey

47 Figure 12: View 2 of Participant Survey Results

Figure 13: Social Media Responses

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Google+ Tumblr Instagram Snapchat Other Number of Social Media ChannelsWhich social network do you use the most?Other LinkedIn Pinterest Snapchat 3 LinkedIn LinkedIn 1 LinkedIn Facebook Pinterest 2 1 Facebook LinkedIn Pinterest Snapchat 3 LinkedIn Facebook LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Instagram 5 Instagram Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 3 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Google+ Instagram Snapchat whats app 8 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter Pinterest 3 1 Facebook Facebook Pinterest 2 1 Facebook Facebook LinkedIn 2 LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Instagram Snapchat 4 1 Facebook Facebook Pinterest Google+ 3 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Google+ Tumblr Instagram 7 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter 2 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook Tumblr Instagram 3 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter 2 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook Instagram 2 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Instagram Snapchat 6 LinkedIn LinkedIn 1 LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Tumblr Instagram Snapchat 5 1 Facebook Facebook Pinterest Google+ 3 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter Pinterest 3 1 Facebook Facebook Instagram 2 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Twitter 1 Twitter Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook Google+ 2 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook LinkedIn Snapchat 3 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter 2 1 Facebook Facebook Instagram Snapchat 3 Snapchat LinkedIn Instagram 2 Instagram Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook Instagram 2 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter Pinterest Snapchat 4 1 Facebook Facebook Instagram 2 Instagram Facebook Instagram 2 Instagram Twitter 1 Twitter Facebook Twitter Instagram 3 Twitter Facebook 1 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+ Tumblr Instagram 6 Twitter Facebook Tumblr 2 reddit Facebook Twitter Instagram Snapchat 4 Snapchat Twitter 1 Twitter Facebook Twitter Pinterest 3 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter Pinterest 3 1 Facebook Facebook Twitter Pinterest Instagram 4 1 Facebook Facebook Pinterest Instagram 3 1 Facebook Facebook 1 1 Facebook Twitter 1 Twitter

Figure 13: Social Media Responses (cont.)

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Discovering new things Every day laptop News and Articles Discovering new things Every day tablet News and Articles Keeping in touch with friends Every day tablet Videos Keeping in touch with friendsDiscovering new things Every day laptop Status Updates Keeping in touch with friends Every day desktop Music Keeping in touch with friends Every day smartphone Videos Keeping in touch with friends Every day desktop News and Articles Staying up to date with news and events Every day laptop Pictures Status Updates Keeping in touch with friends Every day smartphone Status Updates News and Articles Staying up to date with news and events Every day smartphone Status Updates Staying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Status Updates Keeping in touch with friendsStaying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Status Updates News and Articles Keeping in touch with friendsStaying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Music Keeping in touch with friends Every day smartphonePictures Keeping in touch with friendsDiscovering new things Following thought leaders or celebrities Every day laptop None Keeping in touch with friends Every day desktop Pictures Videos Status Updates News and Articles Keeping in touch with friendsDiscovering new thingsStaying up to date with news and eventsFollowing thought leaders or celebrities Every day smartphonePictures Keeping in touch with friends Every day smartphonePictures Discovering new thingsStaying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Videos Status Updates News and Articles Discovering new thingsStaying up to date with news and events Every day smartphone News and Articles Staying up to date with news and events Every day tablet News and Articles Keeping in touch with friendsStaying up to date with news and eventsFollowing thought leaders or celebrities Every day laptop Pictures Keeping in touch with friends Every day smartphonePictures Videos Quizzes Discovering new things reddit Every day laptop Status Updates News and Articles Keeping in touch with friendsDiscovering new thingsStaying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Status Updates News and Articles Keeping in touch with friendsDiscovering new thingsStaying up to date with news and events Every day smartphone Deals & coupons Staying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Status Updates Keeping in touch with friendsStaying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Videos Deals & coupons Keeping in touch with friendsDiscovering new thingsStaying up to date with news and events Every day laptop Pictures Status Updates News and Articles Keeping in touch with friends Every day smartphone Videos News and Articles Keeping in touch with friendsDiscovering new things Every day smartphone Videos News and Articles Staying up to date with news and events Every day smartphonePictures Status Updates News and Articles Discovering new things

Figure 13: Social Media Responses (cont.)

Following thought leaders or celebritiesDo you read something and find you haven't been thinking about it and must read it again?Do you find you forget why you went from one part of the house to the other?Do you fail to notice signposts on the road?Do you find you confuse right and left when giving directions?Do you bump into people?Do you find you forget whether you've turned off a light or a stove, or locked the door?Do you fail to listen to people's names when you are meeting them?Do you say something and realize afterwards that it might be taken as insulting?Do you fail to hear people speaking to you when you are doing something else?Do you lose your temper and regret it?Do you leave important letters unanswered for days?Do you find you forget which way to turn on a road you know well but rarely use?Do you fail to see what you want in a supermarket (although it's there)?Do you find yourself suddenly wondering whether you've used a word correctly?Do you have trouble making up your mind?Do you find you forget appointments?Do you forget where you put something like a newspaper or a book?Do you find you accidentally throw away the thing you want and keep what you meant to throw away -- as in the example of throwiDo you daydream when you ought to be listening to something?Do you find you forget people's names?Do you start doing one thing at home and get distracted into doing something else (unintentionally)?Do you find you can't quite remember something although it's "on the tip of your tongue"?Do you find you forget what you came to the shops to buy?Do you drop things?Do you find you can't think of anything to say?Total CFQ ng away the matchbox and putting the used match in your pocket? Following thought leaders or celebrities Following thought leaders or celebrities3 4 3 3 2 1 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 3 2 2 3 70 2 3 3 2 2 3 4 2 3 2 3 1 2 2 3 1 3 1 3 4 3 3 1 3 2 61 5 3 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 54 0 2 4 1 4 3 4 5 3 4 4 4 1 3 3 4 2 4 3 3 5 4 5 4 3 1 83 4 3 4 4 2 3 4 4 4 2 4 3 4 2 4 4 2 4 4 3 4 2 4 2 3 83 4 2 1 1 1 5 4 3 3 2 2 2 3 4 5 2 3 1 4 5 4 5 2 3 5 76 Following thought leaders or celebrities4 5 4 5 3 3 2 4 4 3 3 4 3 4 4 2 4 2 4 1 3 2 4 5 3 85 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 2 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 64 4 5 4 5 3 4 3 4 3 4 5 4 4 5 4 5 4 4 4 5 4 5 4 4 5 105 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 3 1 2 3 3 2 1 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 54 3 1 1 4 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 3 2 39 3 2 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 36 Following thought leaders or celebrities2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 29 Following thought leaders or celebrities3 4 3 5 4 1 5 3 4 2 3 2 5 5 3 5 4 4 4 4 3 2 4 3 2 87 3 1 3 1 2 4 2 2 2 3 1 1 3 2 1 2 4 2 1 2 2 1 3 1 2 51 4 4 2 2 4 1 2 4 4 5 4 5 3 4 4 5 4 3 4 3 5 4 4 4 5 93 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 92 Following thought leaders or celebrities3 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 1 1 36 Following thought leaders or celebrities3 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 4 4 3 4 5 4 3 4 4 4 4 5 4 4 4 4 5 99 3 2 2 2 1 4 4 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 5 2 2 2 2 2 5 2 2 1 2 61 0 0 2 3 1 4 1 2 5 2 4 5 1 1 3 2 5 1 3 1 5 4 3 4 2 1 4 69 2 2 2 1 1 3 3 3 2 3 2 1 1 1 3 1 4 1 4 4 3 4 1 3 3 58 2 1 3 1 1 4 4 5 1 2 4 1 2 2 5 2 3 3 3 5 2 3 1 2 3 65 2 1 2 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 5 5 2 2 1 1 2 43 4 4 4 4 3 3 4 3 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 4 3 86 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 2 3 3 3 4 1 1 1 1 1 2 4 1 1 5 49 2 3 1 1 1 2 3 2 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 41 1 3 4 1 1 1 3 4 1 4 5 1 1 1 4 1 4 2 4 1 4 4 2 2 4 63 3 3 3 2 2 1 2 3 2 3 2 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 3 2 3 2 2 2 2 53 3 1 3 1 1 3 3 2 3 3 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 3 1 3 3 1 2 3 49 3 2 1 2 1 4 2 1 1 3 5 1 1 2 1 1 4 1 5 3 3 2 1 2 1 53 5 4 2 3 1 1 5 3 4 2 5 1 4 5 3 2 2 1 4 4 3 5 2 3 2 76 Following thought leaders or celebrities3 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 2 4 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 1 3 2 2 2 44 2 2 2 1 1 1 3 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 36 Following thought leaders or celebrities3 2 2 2 2 1 5 2 3 2 4 2 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 4 3 3 2 2 3 66 3 2 1 1 1 3 4 3 2 5 3 1 1 3 5 1 4 1 1 3 5 3 1 3 2 62 4 3 1 2 1 4 2 4 1 1 3 2 1 5 5 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 3 2 5 72 3 4 4 4 3 5 5 4 5 3 3 4 4 4 3 5 5 4 5 3 4 3 4 4 3 98 3 4 2 2 2 2 3 3 4 2 3 3 2 2 3 3 4 3 3 4 4 4 3 2 2 72 Following thought leaders or celebrities3 2 3 2 2 3 3 2 4 2 1 3 2 3 2 1 4 2 4 3 3 4 2 2 2 64 2 3 1 2 1 3 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 4 2 4 3 3 2 2 2 2 59 5 4 4 2 4 3 3 4 3 2 3 2 2 3 4 3 2 3 4 2 3 4 3 4 3 79 1 3 1 1 2 4 1 2 5 1 4 1 1 4 4 4 1 2 3 4 4 5 2 2 1 63 4 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 2 2 2 62 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 5 36 1 3 1 2 3 2 3 3 2 3 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 2 3 2 4 3 2 2 3 54 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 3 3 2 1 2 2 3 1 2 3 1 3 2 47 2 3 2 1 1 2 1 3 2 1 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 53 4 4 2 2 2 4 5 4 4 3 2 3 3 4 3 2 4 1 4 4 5 5 3 2 4 83 3 4 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 2 2 4 4 3 3 2 2 3 4 3 2 3 4 3 3 68 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 4 3 4 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 70

Figure 13: Social Media Responses (cont.)

Total CFQ Count how many times the players in white pass the ball.Did you see anything unusual in the video?How old are you?And finally, what is your gender?Other 55 to 64 Female 70 12 A person in a gorilla suit. Also, this sentence has no verb.35 to 44 Female 61 yes, an ape 45 to 54 Female 54 55 to 64 Female 0 25 to 34 Female 83 14 It was all unusual 45 to 54 Male 83 8 no 25 to 34 Female 76 13 No 25 to 34 Male 85 30 no 25 to 34 Male 64 16 No 55 to 64 Male 105 30 25 to 34 Male 54 16 a gorilla 25 to 34 Female 39 16 White dress players pass to white dress players only.25 to 34 Female 36 A monkey showed up on the screen.25 to 34 Female 29 no 25 to 34 Male 87 no 25 to 34 Female 51 17 no 25 to 34 Female 93 16 no 18 to 24 Male 92 They are throwing balls at each other?22 45 to 54 Male 36 Gorilla 25 to 34 Male 99 Someone dressed as chimpanzee came in25 to 34 Male 61 9 Gorilla 35 to 44 Female 0 35 to 44 Female 0 35 to 44 Female 69 no 35 to 44 Female 58 16 The clip at the end 55 to 64 Female 65 14 I was focusing on the players not the larger scene35 to 44 Male 43 no, thats entirely too difficultyeah, 25 to 34 Male 86 18 TIMES 35 to 44 Male 49 16 No 25 to 34 Male 41 16 A man or woman in a gorilla suit18 to 24 Female 63 16 No 25 to 34 Male 53 16 A gorilla 35 to 44 Female 49 no 25 to 34 Male 53 16 People only passed to others in the same color shirt.25 to 34 Female 76 14 Nothing unusual 18 to 24 Male 44 The gorilla. And people changed clothes.35 to 44 Female 36 17 Person in a gorilla suit. 25 to 34 Male 66 The gorilla 35 to 44 Male 62 16 No 35 to 44 Female 72 16 Someone dressed up as gorilla25 to 34 Male 98 0 No 25 to 34 Male 72 16 Gorilla walked through 35 to 44 Male 64 16 One white player always bumped ball on ground before passing25 to 34 Male 59 no 35 to 44 Female 79 12 no 25 to 34 Male 63 16 a gorilla went in the frame and beat on his chest18 to 24 Male 62 14 it was going so fast i couldnt tell25 to 34 Female 36 12 A gorilla 35 to 44 Male 54 16 A gorilla 25 to 34 Female 47 Someone left the screen towards the end of the video25 to 34 Male 53 16 no 45 to 54 Female 83 16 I saw a gorilla. 45 to 54 Female 68 7 a gorilla came and gone 25 to 34 Female 70 16 Nothing unusual 35 to 44 Male

53 Table 4: Cognitive Failures Questionnaire

Table 4: Cognitive Failures Questionnaire Participant Average Scores by Question

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