Change Blindness
When you switch between tasks, errors that wouldn’t have happened otherwise start to creep in, because – Earl explained – ‘your brain is error-prone. When you switch from task to task, your brain has to backtrack a little bit and pick up and figure out where it left off’ – and it can’t do that perfectly. Glitches start to occur. ‘Instead of
... See moreJohann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention
Change is endlessly fascinating to brains. ‘Almost all perception is based on the detection of change’ says the neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott. ‘Our perceptual systems basically don’t work unless there are changes to detect.’ In a stable environment, the brain is relatively calm. But when it detects change, that event is immediately
... See moreWill Storr • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better
imagine that you are viewing this page on a computer screen, and the computer is tracking your eye movements and knows where your fovea is on the page. Imagine that wherever you look, the right text for that spot on the page is shown clearly in the small area corresponding to your fovea, but everywhere else on the page, the computer shows random,
... See moreJeff Johnson • Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules
Erik Hoel • The egregore passes you by
When Indiana Jones, for example, rapidly scans a room full of cups to find the true Grail, his eyes hardly rest on a single one for more than a tiny fraction of a second. And yet, his brain is calculating, cup, cup, cup, grail? no, no, no faster than he even perceives. It’s all transient attention until his eyes rest upon that humble “cup of a
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