About

Howard Egeth's research focuses on perception and cognition, attention and attentional selectivity, and memory. He is a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. His work involves studying how individuals perceive and process information, with particular attention to how attention influences perception and cognitive processes. Egeth's contributions include advancing understanding of attentional mechanisms and their role in perception and memory, contributing to the broader field of psychological and brain sciences.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Communication
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindness

  eLife · 2025-02-03 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Summary The relation between attention, perception and awareness is among the most fundamental problems in the science of the mind. One of the most striking and well-known phenomena bearing on this question is inattentional blindness (IB; Neisser & Becklen, 1975; Mack & Rock, 1998; Most et al., 2001, 2005). In IB, naïve observers fail to report clearly visible stimuli when their attention is otherwise engaged—famously even missing a gorilla parading before their eyes (Simons & Chabris, 1999). This phenomenon and the research programs it has motivated carry tremendous theoretical significance, both as crucial evidence that awareness requires attention (Cohen et al., 2012; Prinz, 2012; Noah & Mangun, 2020) and as a key tool in seeking the neural correlates of consciousness (Rees et al., 1999; Pitts et al., 2014; Hutchinson, 2019). However, these and other implications critically rest on a notoriously biased measure: asking participants whether they noticed anything unusual (and interpreting negative answers as reflecting a complete lack of perception). Here, in the largest ever set of IB studies, we show that, as a group, inattentionally blind participants can successfully report the location, color and shape of the stimuli they deny noticing. This residual visual sensitivity shows that perceptual information remains accessible in IB. We further show that subjective reports in IB are conservative, by introducing absent trials where no IB stimulus is presented; this approach allows us to show for the first time that observers collectively show a systematic bias to report not noticing in IB—essentially ‘playing it safe’ in reporting their sensitivity. This pair of results is consistent with an alternative hypothesis about IB, namely that inattentionally blind subjects retain some degree of awareness of the stimuli they fail to report. Overall, these data provide the strongest evidence to date of significant residual visual sensitivity in IB. They also challenge the use of inattentional blindness to argue that awareness requires attention.

  PublisherDOI

• Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindness

  eLife · 2025-05-19 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  The relation between attention, perception, and awareness is among the most fundamental problems in the science of the mind. One of the most striking and well-known phenomena bearing on this question is inattentional blindness (IB). In IB, naive observers fail to report clearly visible stimuli when their attention is otherwise engaged—famously missing a gorilla parading before their eyes. IB carries tremendous significance, both as evidence that awareness requires attention and as a tool in seeking the neural correlates of consciousness. However, such implications rest on a notoriously biased measure: asking participants whether they noticed anything unusual (and interpreting negative answers as reflecting a complete lack of perception). Here, in the largest ever set of IB studies, we show that, as a group, inattentionally blind participants can successfully report the location, color, and shape of stimuli they deny noticing, demonstrating that perceptual information remains accessible in IB. By introducing absent trials, we further show that observers are collectively biased to report not noticing in IB—essentially ‘playing it safe’ in reporting their sensitivity. These data provide the strongest evidence to date of significant residual visual sensitivity in IB. They also challenge the use of inattentional blindness to argue that awareness requires attention.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response: Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindness

  2025-05-19

  peer-reviewOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Not Simply Two Sides of the Same Coin: Target Enhancement and Distractor Suppression Draw on Independent Neural Mechanisms

  2025-09-02

  articleOpen access

  Enhancement and suppression have traditionally been described as a shared process; enhancing relevant information subsequently suppresses irrelevant information, but there may also exist separable mechanisms. Recent evidence indicates that target enhancement and distractor suppression can be measured separately, using both behavioral and physiological approaches. It is unclear, however, whether the underlying mechanisms are also separable. We used an individual differences approach to investigate whether enhancement and suppression strengths vary independently across individuals, which would provide strong evidence supporting the existence of separate mechanisms. This approach, however, requires dissociable, internally-reliable individual-difference measures. We found reliable enhancement measures for endogenous cueing effects (Experiment 1) and statistical learning effects (Experiment 2) for target location. Measures of suppression in Experiments 1 and 2 were unreliable. In Experiment 3, we encouraged a single strategy (“singleton-search mode”) by changing the colors and shapes of targets and distractors across trials. We found reliable individual differences in reaction time measures for enhancement and suppression. Critically, these reliable measures did not covary. Experiments 4 and 5 largely replicated the results of Experiment 3. Again, individual-difference measures of enhancement and suppression strength did not covary. These results show a clear dissociation: while enhancement yields reliable individual differences across task manipulations, suppression measures are usually unreliable and sensitive to task parameters. When individual-difference measures of both enhancement and suppression are reliable, they do not covary. These results cannot be explained solely by a shared-mechanism account of enhancement and suppression, and instead support the hypothesis that independent enhancement and suppression mechanisms exist.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Not Simply Two Sides of the Same Coin: Target Enhancement and Distractor Suppression Draw on Independent Neural Mechanisms

  2025-09-03

  articleOpen access

  Enhancement and suppression have traditionally been described as a shared process; enhancing relevant information subsequently suppresses irrelevant information, but there may also exist separable mechanisms. Recent evidence indicates that target enhancement and distractor suppression can be measured separately, using both behavioral and physiological approaches. It is unclear, however, whether the underlying mechanisms are also separable. We used an individual differences approach to investigate whether enhancement and suppression strengths vary independently across individuals, which would provide strong evidence supporting the existence of separate mechanisms. This approach, however, requires dissociable, internally-reliable individual-difference measures. We found reliable enhancement measures for endogenous cueing effects (Experiment 1) and statistical learning effects (Experiment 2) for target location. Measures of suppression in Experiments 1 and 2 were unreliable. In Experiment 3, we encouraged a single strategy (“singleton-search mode”) by changing the colors and shapes of targets and distractors across trials. We found reliable individual differences in reaction time measures for enhancement and suppression. Critically, these reliable measures did not covary. Experiments 4 and 5 largely replicated the results of Experiment 3. Again, individual-difference measures of enhancement and suppression strength did not covary. These results show a clear dissociation: while enhancement yields reliable individual differences across task manipulations, suppression measures are usually unreliable and sensitive to task parameters. When individual-difference measures of both enhancement and suppression are reliable, they do not covary. These results cannot be explained solely by a shared-mechanism account of enhancement and suppression, and instead support the hypothesis that independent enhancement and suppression mechanisms exist.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response: Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindness

  2025-02-03

  peer-reviewOpen access

  The relation between attention, perception and awareness is among the most fundamental problems in the science of the mind. One of the most striking and well-known phenomena bearing on this question is inattentional blindness (IB; ; ; , ). In IB, naïve observers fail to report clearly visible stimuli when their attention is otherwise engaged—famously even missing a gorilla parading before their eyes (). This phenomenon and the research programs it has motivated carry tremendous theoretical significance, both as crucial evidence that awareness requires attention (; ; ) and as a key tool in seeking the neural correlates of consciousness (; ; ). However, these and other implications critically rest on a notoriously biased measure: asking participants whether they noticed anything unusual (and interpreting negative answers as reflecting a complete lack of perception). Here, in the largest ever set of IB studies, we show that, as a group, inattentionally blind participants can successfully report the location, color and shape of the stimuli they deny noticing. This residual visual sensitivity shows that perceptual information remains accessible in IB. We further show that subjective reports in IB are conservative, by introducing absent trials where no IB stimulus is presented; this approach allows us to show for the first time that observers collectively show a systematic bias to report not noticing in IB—essentially ‘playing it safe’ in reporting their sensitivity. This pair of results is consistent with an alternative hypothesis about IB, namely that inattentionally blind subjects retain some degree of awareness of the stimuli they fail to report. Overall, these data provide the strongest evidence to date of significant residual visual sensitivity in IB. They also challenge the use of inattentional blindness to argue that awareness requires attention.

  PublisherDOI

• Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindness

  eLife · 2024-10-04 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Summary The relation between attention, perception and awareness is among the most fundamental problems in the science of the mind. One of the most striking and well-known phenomena bearing on this question is inattentional blindness (IB; Neisser & Becklen, 1975; Mack & Rock, 1998; Most et al., 2001, 2005). In IB, naïve observers fail to report clearly visible stimuli when their attention is otherwise engaged—famously even missing a gorilla parading before their eyes (Simons & Chabris, 1999). This phenomenon and the research programs it has motivated carry tremendous theoretical significance, both as crucial evidence that awareness requires attention (Cohen et al., 2012; Prinz, 2012; Noah & Mangun, 2020) and as a key tool in seeking the neural correlates of consciousness (Rees et al., 1999; Pitts et al., 2014; Hutchinson, 2019). However, these and other implications critically rest on a notoriously biased measure: asking participants whether they noticed anything unusual (and interpreting negative answers as reflecting a complete lack of visual awareness). Here, in the largest ever set of IB studies, we show that inattentionally blind participants can successfully report the location, color and shape of the stimuli they deny noticing. This residual visual sensitivity shows that perceptual information remains accessible in IB. We further show that subjective reports in IB are conservative, by introducing absent trials where no IB stimulus is presented; this approach allows us to show for the first time that observers are systematically biased to report not noticing in IB—essentially ‘playing it safe’ in reporting their sensitivity. This pair of results is consistent with an alternative hypothesis about IB, namely that subjects retain awareness of stimuli they fail to report. Overall, these data provide the strongest evidence to date of significant residual visual sensitivity in IB, and even cast doubt on claims that awareness requires attention.

  PublisherDOI

• Neurocognitive Mechanism of Radiologists’ Perceptual Errors: Results of Preliminary Studies

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024-05-02 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Background The most prevalent type of radiologist error is failing to detect abnormalities on images, the so-called “perceptual error.” The prevalence of this type of false-negative (FN) error remains essentially unchanged since it was first described in 1949. Purpose The purpose of this research is to identify a potential neurocognitive mechanism contributing to radiologists’ susceptibility to perceptual error, in order to inform intervention strategies to reduce such errors in practice. These experiments evaluated the relationship between brain network activation states and radiologists’ perceptual errors on two distinct visual tasks utilizing functional MRI ( f MRI) and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ( f NIRs). Materials and Methods A prospective study consisting of three experiments was carried out on a small number of radiologist subjects. The first two experiments used f MRI, with participants performing two distinct types of visual tasks, respectively: the first was a task requiring subjects’ continuous attention and the second task required visual search. For the first of these experiments, simultaneous functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopic Imaging ( f NIRs) was utilized along with f MRI. The second experiment was combined f MRI and eye-tracking. A third experiment using f NIRs alone was an observational study of subjects’ neurocognitive states during their usual practice. Results An approximately threefold increased risk of FN perceptual errors (misses) was observed in the presence of a particular error-prone neurocognitive state (EPS) involving simultaneous co-activation of elements of the Default Mode Network (DMN) and Frontoparietal Network (FPN), which was detectable by both functional imaging modalities, with high concordance. EPS episodes appeared to be stochastic in occurrence, and occurred without operator awareness. We also found a high prevalence of the EPS in radiologists performing their normal interpretive tasks in their actual practice setting. Conclusion Our results suggest that dynamic interactions between brain networks leading to a particular error-prone state (EPS) may underlie a substantial fraction of radiologists’ perceptual errors. We demonstrate that this EPS can be detected unobtrusively in the clinical setting. These results suggest potential intervention strategies for perceptual error, the largest class of radiologist errors in practice. Key Results/Highlights Periodic episodes of a discrete neurocognitive state were observed in radiologists during specific visual tasks and in actual clinical settings. There was an approximately threefold increased risk of perceptual error during this state. Most FN errors for the two visual tasks occurred during these brief episodes (p < 0.01). There was also a highly significant anti-correlation of the prevalence of the error-prone neurocognitive state (EPS) with subject age (p < 0.001). Conflicts The authors report no conflicts of interest or potential competing interests. Summary Statement We report experimental results corelating perceptual errors by radiologists to episodic fluctuations in brain network activation, which appear to occur on a stochastic basis. These produce an error-prone neurocognitive state outside of operator awareness or control that is associated with an approximately threefold increase in the risk of perceptual error.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Terms of debate: Consensus definitions to guide the scientific discourse on visual distraction

  Attention Perception & Psychophysics · 2024-01-04 · 57 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Hypothesis-driven research rests on clearly articulated scientific theories. The building blocks for communicating these theories are scientific terms. Obviously, communication - and thus, scientific progress - is hampered if the meaning of these terms varies idiosyncratically across (sub)fields and even across individual researchers within the same subfield. We have formed an international group of experts representing various theoretical stances with the goal to homogenize the use of the terms that are most relevant to fundamental research on visual distraction in visual search. Our discussions revealed striking heterogeneity and we had to invest much time and effort to increase our mutual understanding of each other's use of central terms, which turned out to be strongly related to our respective theoretical positions. We present the outcomes of these discussions in a glossary and provide some context in several essays. Specifically, we explicate how central terms are used in the distraction literature and consensually sharpen their definitions in order to enable communication across theoretical standpoints. Where applicable, we also explain how the respective constructs can be measured. We believe that this novel type of adversarial collaboration can serve as a model for other fields of psychological research that strive to build a solid groundwork for theorizing and communicating by establishing a common language. For the field of visual distraction, the present paper should facilitate communication across theoretical standpoints and may serve as an introduction and reference text for newcomers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Not Simply Two Sides of the Same Coin: Target Enhancement and Distractor Suppression Draw on Independent Neural Mechanisms

  2024-04-15 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Enhancement and suppression have traditionally been described as a shared process; enhancing relevant information subsequently suppresses irrelevant information, but there may also exist separable mechanisms. Recent evidence indicates that target enhancement and distractor suppression can be measured separately, using both behavioral and physiological approaches. It is unclear, however, whether the underlying mechanisms are also separable. We used an individual differences approach to investigate whether enhancement and suppression strengths vary independently across individuals, which would provide strong evidence supporting the existence of separate mechanisms. This approach, however, requires dissociable, internally reliable individual-difference measures. We found reliable enhancement measures for both endogenous cueing effects (Experiment 1) and statistical learning effects (Experiment 2) for target location. Measures of suppression in Experiments 1 and 2 were unreliable. In Experiment 3, we encouraged a single strategy ("singleton-search mode") by changing the colors and shapes of targets and distractors across trials. We found reliable individual differences in reaction time measures for enhancement and suppression. Critically, these reliable measures did not covary. Experiments 4 and 5 largely replicated the results of Experiment 3. Again, individual-difference measures of enhancement and suppression strength did not covary. These results show a clear dissociation: While enhancement yielded reliable individual differences across task manipulations, suppression measures were usually unreliable and sensitive to task parameters. When individual-difference measures of both enhancement and suppression were reliable, they did not covary. These results cannot be explained solely by a shared-mechanism account of enhancement and suppression, and instead support the hypothesis that independent enhancement and suppression mechanisms exist.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH057388

  NIH · $297k · 2001

• NIH Grant T32MH018215

  NIH · $928k · 1996

Frequent coauthors

• Andrew B. Leber

  The Ohio State University

  19 shared

• M. Palomares

  University of South Carolina

  15 shared

• Jeff Moher

  Connecticut College

  14 shared

• Steven Yantis

  14 shared

• Dominique Lamy

  Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Dijon Bourgogne

  13 shared

• Corbin A. Cunningham

  12 shared

• Charles L. Folk

  Villanova University

  11 shared

• Michael McCloskey

  Johns Hopkins University

  11 shared