Being Aware of "Change Blindness"

As a Forensic Psychology major, I have been taught to always be aware of my surroundings and what could happen if you are "blind" to what is going on right in front of you, without actually being "blind." In 1998, two professors from Kent State and Harvard University did a study that involved college students lingering/walking around campus. These experimenters wanted to test just how well people are aware of the immediate environment around them.They would have an actor walk up to a pedestrian and ask for simple directions, while without the subject even "noticing," the actor would be replaced with someone else. Only half of the subjects/pedestrians noticed this change. From this experiment, we have learned more about the phenomenon of "change blindness," Humans are extremely selective about what we see and take from our "visual scene." From this, we can conclude that recognizing patterns and our memory of things is much more heavily relied on than we perceive them to be.

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Simons2002.pdf