Information overload acts ’to dim the lights’ on what we see

Too much visual information causes a phenomenon known as 'load induced blindness', with an effect akin to dimming the lights, reports a new UCL study.The new findings could be used to identify high-risk situations in all walks of life and look at ways to mitigate times of highest risk. These techniques could be used to understand everyday problems such as why you might bump into a lamppost on a busy street or even to assess the demanding information loads faced by pilots and surgeons. More than half of all air crashes are down to pilot error, as the overwhelming amount of information faced by pilots makes them more likely to miss things. The research shows that when people have to deal with lots of visual data, their ability to spot critical information is lessened as if light levels of the image they need to detect were significantly lowered. In the experiment, volunteers completed a sensory memory task that either involved encoding the colour of a single square, 'low load', or both the colours and positions of six different coloured squares, 'high load' over many computerised displays that were rapidly flashed up. In addition, while they encoded the coloured squares, a stripped black and white image appeared in the surrounding area. The striped patches had lines in different orientations, representing the building blocks of shapes.