Cognitive Science and Social Psychology Seminar ~ Dr. Jeremy Wolfe, Harvard Medical School.

Cognitive Science and Social Psychology Seminar 

Dr. Jeremy Wolfe ~ Professor of Ophthalmology and Radiology, Harvard Medical School

Title: How the !%#  did I miss that? When and why do we ‘look but fail to see’?

Abstract: Why don’t we see everything that we want to see or that we think we should see? From typos to tumors to gorillas in Introductory Psychology demos, humans manage to routinely miss targets that are "right in front of our eyes". In the psychologically most interesting cases, these are instances where observers fail to respond to stimuli that are clearly visible. The observers may even directly fixate on those stimuli. Some of these “Looked But Failed to See” (LBFTS) errors are life-threatening (e.g. missing that tumor or a weapon in carry-on baggage). This is a cognitive and a metacognitive problem. We expect to be able to “see” what we look at. I will give a four-part account of LBFTS errors. Brutally summarizing, we can say that human visual attention is 1) limited, 2) misguided, 3) incomplete, and 4) misunderstood. If all goes well, you will look, you will fail to see, and you will gain insight into why that happens.

Fall Semester Speaker Schedule: