Inattentional Blindness

Introspection was one of the first branches of psychology, popularized by Wilhelm Wundt. It was a technique which allowed trained subjects to describe their experiences and thought processes in response to a stimuli. The subjects had to be trained for this process because the responses had to be elementary mental elements. For example, Wundt wanted subjects to describe chords on a piano to see if they could accurately recall each individual chord. Unfortunately, introspection grew less popular over time because it was inefficient. Perception, which was barely studied back in the early twentieth century, often colored one's results because one subject's perception of a stimulus could be entirely different than another subject's results. On the
Mark and Rock (1998) were the first to discover this phenomenon when they asked subjects to focus on a cross on a screen and tell if the vertical or horizontal line was longer. On the sixth trial, they added a small square placed close to both lines. After the trial, subjects were asked if they had noticed anything unusual within the trial, with only ten percent of the subjects reporting that they noticed the square. Inattentional blindness occurs most often when the subjects are focused on something else, such as the lines on the cross mentioned
I can remember things I have learned from classes three years ago but there are many instances where I cannot remember what I had just learned from the lecture I just had. This is especially troublesome if the material is similar. If I learned one verb tense in my French course three weeks ago, I will often mix it up with the verb tense we are learning that week. This also makes the already ineffective idea of cramming an obsolete concept for me. A good study habit would be to take multiple short breaks between studying and do this over a consistent basis. I do much better taking fifteen minutes a day studying that week's verb tense because I will remember it easier than if I crammed for that same amount of time before a test. If the material is similiar, I have also tried contrasting the information and seeing how the material truly is different, and if I remember the differences of the material I can often remember them