Seeing without Seeing

One of the tools that our lab is currently using is the phenomenon of ‘motion-induced blindness’ (MIB) – objects will fluctuate into and out of awareness when they are superimposed onto a motion pattern. That is, objects will seem to just disappear and then suddenly reappear even though they are physically present the whole time. You can experience this for yourself with the below demonstration. Keep your eyes still on the white cross in the center and you should find that the yellow disc will fade away. (You can convince yourself that it is really is still there by simply moving your eyes.) We have used MIB to explore the relationship between awareness and visual perception.

Find out more about our MIB research with the below links:

Seeing the disappearance on an unseen object. Mitroff & Scholl, Perception 2004

Online parsing of objects and groups during MIB. Mitroff & Scholl, Visual Cognition, 2005

Related papers:

Mitroff, S. R. & Scholl, B. J. (2005). Forming and updating object representations without awareness: Evidence from motion-induced blindness. Vision Research, 45(8), 961-967.

Mitroff, S. R. & Scholl, B. J. (2004). Seeing the disappearance of unseen objects. Perception, 33, 1267 - 1273.