Study title

This collection contains data from 10 experiments. The research involved the collection of anonymised behavioural performance data (including reaction times, response accuracies and/or verbal responses) from groups of human observers. Brief descriptions of the experiments are provided, along with a separate data file and protocol for each experiment. Each file contains a summary sheet detailing the averages of the performance measures collected for each participant, as well as subsequent sheets containing the raw data and the formulae used to calculate the averages. The information that we receive through the sense of touch can be extremely important, in indicating that a stimulus has already made contact with the body and may thus require an immediate response. For example, although the sight and sound of a mosquito suggests that you may soon be bitten, the feeling of it landing on your skin signals that this risk has substantially increased! Given this high level of importance, one might assume that tactile stimuli would be detected with very high priority, perhaps to the extent that they could attract our attention even when we are engaged in another demanding task. However, in contrast to this assumption, intriguing preliminary findings suggest that the absence of attention can in fact leave people open to 'inattentional numbness', whereby they completely miss tactile stimuli that are otherwise clearly noticeable (Mack and Rock, 1998). Indeed, although it is possible to feel a mosquito landing on the skin, many of us have also suffered the consequences of not doing so successfully, perhaps experiencing 'inattentional numbness' through focusing attention on an absorbing book or a delicious meal. Pickpockets may deliberately exploit this tendency, bumping into someone on one side in order to draw attention away from a pocket on the other side from which they are stealing a wallet. The current project will investigate this exciting phenomenon of 'inattentional...