Inattentional Blindness AND Focus

I was posting this on the great ""How "the law of attraction" works" thread www.abovetopsecret.com... , but I think It would be a little bit off topic, even though I know that stuff is very related.

The term “inattentional blindness” entered the psychology lexicon in 1998 when psychologists Arien Mack, PhD, of the New School for Social Research, and the late Irvin Rock, PhD, of the University of California, Berkeley, published the book, “Inattentional Blindness,” describing a series of experiments on the phenomenon. In Mack and Rock's standard procedure, they presented a small cross briefly on a computer screen for each of several experimental trials and asked participants to judge which arm of the cross was longer. After several trials, an unexpected object, such as a brightly colored rectangle, appeared on the screen along with the cross.

Mack and Rock reported that participants—busy paying attention to the cross—often failed to notice the unexpected object, even when it had appeared in the center of their field of vision. When participants' attention was not diverted by the cross, they easily noticed such objects.

jeff.dean.home.att.net...

Sustained inattentional blindness -- selective looking experiments
viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu...

I think that explains why the majority of the magic tricks out there works.

Derren Brown's People Swap: www.youtube.com...

Knowing about that, how we can improve our lives?

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones, and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The e-mailers, on the other hands, did worse than the stoners by an average of 6 points.

Source: www.fourhourworkweek.com...

We see that the human brain works better focusing in just one single thing at the time.

From Chapter 1 The Dynamics of Full Engagement: Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance... every one of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors has an energy consequence, for better or worse. The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time we have.

Performance, health and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy... Leaders are the stewards of organizational energy - in companies, organizations and even in families. They inspire or demoralize others first by how effectively they manage their own energy and next by how well they mobilize, focus, invest and renew the collective energy of those they lead. The skillful management of energy, individually and organizationally, makes possible something that we call full engagement. They go on to discuss how energy has four components and how we can increase each one:

* Physical Energy (Fueling the Fire)
* Emotional Energy (Transforming Threat into Challenge)
* Mental Energy (Appropriate Focus and Realistic Optimism)
* Spiritual Energy ( He who has a "Why" to Live)

Source: connect.educause.edu...

[edit on 22-1-2009 by infobrazil]

[edit on 22-1-2009 by infobrazil]

Reticular Activation System

have you ever suddenly seen something you hadn’t noticed before, yet it was there all along? You just bought a new car in what you thought was an unusual colour and suddenly every fourth car on the road is the same make - and the same colour - as yours. This is your filter system (RAS) in action. When something becomes important to us, we notice more of it.

Source: learningadvance.blogspot.com...

TYLER: Right. We’re consumers. We’re by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty — these things don’t concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, television with five hundred channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

- Fight Club

"television with five hundred channels"... and Internet with billions of sites!

I used to live in a "ADD" world. Now my TV is turned off since November. I barely check the newspaper. I'm really selective of what I read now.
And I am really studing and praticing meditation and doing concentration exercises and single tasking, lately.

One exercise that I like to do, for concentration purposes is to count the letters of a book.

[edit on 21-1-2009 by infobrazil]

This subject is very interesting to me. I have had many situations where I am focusing on a particular area that I am very familiar with, when all of a sudden, I see and inanimate object move or just appear from out of nowhere directly in front of my eyes!. I realize a few seconds later that the object was there all along. It is scary when it happens though. I am glad it is not unusual. I was getting worried about it.


I also experience RAS all the time. Once you see something that you want no matter how rare (within reason), it is everywhere.

Let me see if I got this right. We see everything but our mind selects what is relevant to the task or moment and this is what we see. If the situation or moment changes and other items are needed or become important then they are allowed to be part of our conscience vision.


Makes sense to me.