object blindness?

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Happens to me all the time - it's so frustrating, especially when it happens in front of others or when you are not sure of the location of an item and go backwards and forwards from potential location to potential location trying to locate the one object among the many. For some items, when someone tells me it's right in front of me, and there is a group of objects in my range, I find the only way to recognise the one I am looking for is to 'handle' them.

Until a couple of years ago I had faultless eye-sight so it's not a vision issue. I find I also cannot easily sort other kinds of visual info, for instance I have a lot of trouble figuring out with my eyes where I should start a task like stacking dishes, or disentangling a pot from its stack in the pot cupboard. Heck I have trouble with the two page spreads at the start of Mad Magazine movie satires...

It's surreal reading such similar experiences to my own, right down to the 'dude where's my car?' joke, I've used that one with my partner many a time when he's called out to me "hey where you going" as I walk right past our car.

hello

squares are the most popular images in my mind along with growing white cirlcles

Oh, I hate it when that happens. It seems to happen to me a lot when I'm in the kitchen. I'll put down a bottle of milk or whatever else, and a couple of minutes later I won't be able to find it again, even when I know it should be right there! ;^^ One thing that I find helps a lot is to pause for a moment, and then to look at every object around you individually, taking the time to properly recognise each object. Eventually I find the missing object again when I do that.

I was helped to find this thread by another member through a pm and thought I'd comment on it.

At times I cant find something ; like a certain object , but it then seems to reappear right there in an obvious way, right in front your face kinda of thing.
I once CAUGHT 'it' in action( the object )to build from the bottom to filling in at the top up to a complete form( much like a cartoon being painted in)and it then dawned on me that this is the phenomena that is happening.

That's fascinating. I wonder if the mental image causes the brain to edit out the real object as redundant.

I wonder what would happen if you visualized something else, like cheese when you're looking for your keys.

For an interesting insight into NT visual cognition object blindness check out the following video:

http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php

^^ IDK
I think it might just be a simple informational overload from trying too hard; if one relaxes there it is' kinda thing'.
It might likend to an impaired BUS in a computer , to where the traffic of information is to great for the BUS to handle and process and to then pass it into the C.P.U.; so the information back-jams up until the load lightens up and then it can pass and process.


edit: spelling

Last edited by Mdyar on 28 Aug 2009, 9:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am the worst for this. Even after someone points it out to me, unless they're holding it up to my face, it will usually take me another couple of minutes.

This is almost a daily occurrence for me. I'll go through the closet hanger by hanger and not see what I was looking for until the 3rd go round. Sometimes what I'll do is decide on one obvious feature to scan for, like a color. For me life is like a 'Where's Waldo' picture.

Oh my god. I thought I was the only one! I go to look for things, and see everything else BUT the thing I was first looking for! I'll ask my parents to help me look, and they find it in a few seconds..

Happens all the time.

I am just terrible at finding things. My family always asks me not to look for anything because I make a fool out of myself when I go around looking for anything.

That happens to me a lot. I'll be looking for something only to find out that it was right in front of me, the whole time.

Now that you have made the suggestion, that is likely what will happen next!

Me too! I usually stop and ask someone else to look for me, and it's always there. Sometimes I know there item is there and I still can't see it - now I know why!

Wow, that video is really overwhelming. I didn't have time to notice anything going on in the background.

As for my own visual processing, I'm notoriously bad at finding things. I'm very likely to miss objects that are in plain sight. There are also times when I will see a mental image of an object in my head, but if the object I find doesn't match it, I will just keep looking. I've also had cases when someone tells me to go get something and I bring back something entirely different. Because that's what I thought they were asking for.