Answer to Question 1
Evolutionarily, our ability to spot predators as well as to detect food sources has been a great advantage for our survival. Adaptive behavior requires us to be attentive to changes in our environment because changes cue us to both opportunities and dangers. It thus may be surprising to discover that people can show remarkable levels of change blindness, that is, an inability to detect changes in objects or scenes that are being viewed. Closely related to change blindness is inattentional blindness, which is a phenomenon in which people are not able to see things that are actually there
Answer to Question 2
Preconscious perception has been observed in people who have lesions in some areas of the visual cortex. Typically, the patients are blind in areas of the visual field that correspond to the lesioned areas of the cortex. Some of these patients, however, seem to show blindsighttraces of visual perceptual ability in blind areas. When forced to guess about a stimulus in the blind region, they correctly guess locations and orientations of objects at above-chance levels.
One explanation for blindsight is the following: The information from the retina is forwarded to the visual cortex, which is damaged in cortically blind people. It seems, however, that a part of the visual information bypasses the visual cortex and is sent to other locations in the cortex. The information from these locations is unconsciously accessible, although it seems to be conscious only when it is processed in the visual cortex.
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