Daniel Dennett claimed that our brains hold only a few salient details about the world—and that is why we are able to operate successfully.
John Grimes caused a stir when he described how people who were shown computer-generated pictures of a natural scene were blind to changes that were made while the eye was, for example, scanning a scene or blinking.
Stephen Kosslyn says that this supports the idea that we take in just what information we consider important, and fill in the gaps where the details are less important. ‘The illusion that we see “everything” is partly a result of filling in the gaps using memory,’ he says. ‘Such memories can be based on beliefs and expectations.’
According to Kevin O’Regan, our sense of controlling what we see is also illusory.
Questions
1. People fail to notice what occurs during eye-movements.
2. If we retained every image and memory, we would not function as well as we do.
3. We misinterpret what we see because we are dependent on our imagination.
4. We are not totally in charge of what we give attention to.