Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 15, 2026

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)
Published on: September 7, 2018
When you fail to see what you were told to look for: inattentional blindness and task instructions
Anne M Aimola Davies1, Stephen Waterman, Rebekah C White
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Anne.Aimola@psy.ox.ac.uk
Abstract:
Inattentional blindness studies have shown that an unexpected object may go unnoticed if it does not share the property specified in the task instructions. Our aim was to demonstrate that observers develop an attentional set for a property not specified in the task instructions if it allows easier performance of the primary task. Three experiments were conducted using a dynamic selective-looking paradigm. Stimuli comprised four black squares and four white diamonds, so that shape and colour varied together. Task instructions specified shape but observers developed an attentional set for colour, because we made the black-white discrimination easier than the square-diamond discrimination. None of the observers instructed to count bounces by squares reported an unexpected white square, whereas two-thirds of observers instructed to count bounces by diamonds did report the white square. When attentional set departs from task instructions, you may fail to see what you were told to look for.
Related Concept Videos
Visual Agnosia
Hindsight Biases
Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon
Subconsciousness and No Awareness
An illustrative example of subconscious processing is its role in problem-solving. Often, individuals...
Prosopagnosia
Blind Procedures

