What is inattentional blindness?

• A. Failing to notice an obvious object or event because attention is focused elsewhere.
• B. Being legally blind.
• C. Not paying attention to the conversation only.
• D. A skill used in driving only.

Answer: (A)

Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice an obvious object or event because your attention is focused on something else. Your brain can miss things that are right in your visual field if you’re concentrating on a different task or detail, because attention has limited capacity. In real life, this shows up when someone is so focused on a task—like monitoring for a specific cue or performing a mental calculation behind the wheel—that they don’t register a clearly visible hazard or a new person entering the scene. A classic example is the gorilla-in-the-middle study, where people focused on counting passes miss a clearly visible gorilla walking through the scene.

So this option best captures the idea: you overlook something obvious because your attention is elsewhere. The other choices don’t describe this phenomenon: being legally blind isn’t about attention, not paying attention to a conversation only is too narrow, and it’s not a skill used only in driving.