"That’s intuitive enough, but it gets more complicated. **If the briefly flashing stimulus was outside the area of visual attention, but was something distinct like a smiley face or the person’s name, the subject would notice it after all**. This effect depended on how recognizable it was; for example, it didn’t work with a sad or scrambled face, or with a word similar to the person’s name. (If they flashed in the very same spot, I’d see “Jenny,” but “Janny” would go unnoticed.) "From this, Mack and Rock concluded that **all of the information**—noticed and not noticed—**must actually be getting processed, and that it was only some at a late stage of processing that the brain determined whether the stimulus would be perceived or not**. “If this were not the case,” they write, “it becomes difficult to explain why ‘Jack’ is seen but ‘Jeck’ goes undetected, or why a happy face is seen and a sad or scrambled one is detected so much less frequently.” "The researchers suggest that **attention is “a key that unlocks the gate dividing unconscious perception … from conscious perception. Without this attentional key, there simply is no awareness of the stimulus**.”" ([Location 2028](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07RHWKD7N&location=2028)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[attention]], [[inattentional-blindness]], [[monkey-business-test]], **Source** -- [[20251230081807 - B - How to Do Nothing]]