Rensink's research on visual sensing without conscious awareness

¶ … Rensink, Ronald. (2004). Visual sensing without seeing, Psychological Science. 15 (1)

Retrieved November 2, 2011 at http://www.apa.org/about/gr/science/advocacy/2003/rensink.pdf

According to Ronald Rensink, "it has often been assumed that when we use vision to become aware of an object or event in our surroundings, this must be accompanied by a corresponding visual experience" (Rensink 2004: 27). In his research on human visual perception, Rensink conducted a series of experimental studies. He found that when some "observers view a sequence of displays alternating between an image of a scene and the same image changed in some way, they often feel (or sense) the change even though they have no visual experience of it" (Rensink 2004: 27). The implications of his research are that there are two distinct modes of conscious visual perception

Research

Rensink's first study was of 40 observers who were instructed to view a visual field over a course of 48 trials. Observers were told that a change in the visual field would occur every time they observed a picture, although in reality the change occurred only 42 times. They were told to press a response key first when they sensed a change, then when they actually saw a change. The second study replicated this experiment using different images and test subjects.

Results

Of the 40 observers in the first experiment, 19 could only respond when they saw a change, 12 said they sensed a change but with a high rate of error, and only 30% (9 subjects) had a statistically significant success rate. The second experiment with 40 new subjects yielded a similar result. "Of the 40 observers, 17 were in the only-see group, 14 were in the can-sense group, and 9 were in the guess group" (Rensink 2004: 30).

Summarize

There is evidence that on average 30% of the population can sense changes before they are directly observed.

Discussion

The major finding is the evidence for what Rensink calls 'mind-sight' or the ability to holistically and subconsciously perceive information in a non-sensory fashion. However, the article's evidence suggests that this apparent 'sixth sense' is connected to the other senses.

Non-experimental article (Descriptive)

Wacker, Johannes & Tanja Manser. (2011). Interactions of team mental models and monitoring behaviors predict team performance in simulated anesthesia inductions.

Journal of Experimental Psychology, 17 (3): 257 -- 269.

Retrieved November 2, 2011 at http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xap-17-3-257.pdf

Methods

Thirty-one two-person teams consisting of anesthesia residents and anesthesia nurse were videotaped during a simulated anesthesia induction of general anesthesia. Subjects took a questionnaire to determine their perceptions of what 'mental model' they used to structure their team philosophy, and then their interactions were observed and rated by anesthesiologists, in terms of how they performed during the videotaping.

Results

"Neither team monitoring nor systems monitoring was related to team performance, nor were both measures significantly correlated. Similarly, neither accuracy nor similarity of TMM was directly