What do “Look but Fail to See” errors tell us about awareness and/or consciousness
Look but Fail to See (LBFTS) errors are those errors where we miss something that is ‘right in front of our eyes’, even though it is clearly visible and recognizable. Such errors can be amusing, as when we miss a gorilla in an inattentional blindness demo; vexing, as when we miss a typo; and serious, as when a tumor is missed in a CT scan or a weapon is missed at the airport. I will discuss how the capacity limits and operating rules of selective visual attention can give rise to LBFTS errors. LBFTS errors can also inform discussions about the awareness and/or consciousness. They falsify naïve theories that would claim that we are fully aware of everything we are seeing at the current moment, but we knew that wasn’t true. They also falsify or, at least, complexify more interesting theories that equate attention with awareness. Sadly, I will not have a neatly packaged theory of consciousness to offer. Perhaps that will emerge during the question-and-answer period.
Date: 11 December 2025, 13:00
Venue: Seminar Room 7/8 (Lower ground floor) Life and Mind Building South Parks Road, OX1 3EL https://lifeandmind.web.ox.ac.uk/
Speaker: Professor Jeremy Wolfe (Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women's Hospital, USA)
Organising department: Department of Experimental Psychology
Organisers: Dr Fei-Yang Huang (University of Oxford), Dr Sophia Shatek (University of Oxford), Dr Ali Mahmoodi (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: beacon-seminar@psy.ox.ac.uk
Host: Dr Sage Boettcher (University of Oxford)
Part of: Department of Experimental Psychology - Cognitive & Behavioural Neuroscience Seminar series (BEACON)
Booking required?: Not required
Booking email: beacon-seminar@psy.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Fei-Yang Huang