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Barack Obama Blindness (BOB): Absence of Visual Awareness to a Single Object.
Marjan Persuh1, Robert D Melara2
1Department of Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York New York, NY, USA.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
|April 6, 2016
Summary
Prior expectations can cause people to miss obvious visual stimuli, even a salient face. This phenomenon, termed Barack Obama Blindness (BOB), demonstrates a true failure of conscious vision.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Prior expectations significantly influence sensory perception.
- Understanding the limits of conscious awareness is crucial in cognitive science.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if strong prior expectations can completely eliminate awareness of salient visual stimuli.
- To characterize a novel phenomenon of visual unawareness.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted using a demanding visual discrimination task to establish expectancy.
- A single, salient visual object was presented on a critical trial.
- Awareness was probed immediately after stimulus presentation to rule out memory effects.
Main Results:
- Approximately 50% of participants were unaware of a highly visible, solitary object.
- This unawareness persisted even when the stimulus was the face of Barack Obama.
- The phenomenon was termed Barack Obama Blindness (BOB).
Conclusions:
- Prior expectations alone can cause a complete failure of conscious visual perception.
- Barack Obama Blindness (BOB) represents a genuine deficit in conscious vision, not a memory artifact.
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