Inattentional Blindness - Open and Obvious Doctrine 1

ISSUES IN FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
Open-and-Obvious Doctrine I:
Inattentional Blindness

Plaintiffs pursuing litigation as a result of "slip-and-fall" injuries frequently contend with the "open-and-obvious" doctrine. The open-and-obvious doctrine asks whether a person of "average intelligence" should have discovered the hazard.
If a hazard provoking a fall is found to be open-and-obvious, the plaintiff is typically left with no cause of action. The relevant scientific data, however, necessitate asking under what conditions is a hazard open and obvious?
Consider for example an experiment in which participants observe a video of two superimposed ball-passing games. One group of players wear white uniforms, and the other wear black. The participants in the experiment were asked to count the number of passes between members of one of the groups.
Entirely unexpectedly, a woman carrying an umbrella strolls across the court where the players are competing. The woman's image was also superimposed on the video, but clearly visible for four seconds.
When subsequently asked what they had observed on the video, only 21% of the participants reported seeing the woman with the umbrella. Though clearly visible, her presence was not "open-and-obvious" to the vast majority of those participating in the experiment.
This experiment demonstrates that visual attention is goal directed. The participants in this experiment responded to a specific goal -- count the number of passes. The woman carrying the umbrella was irrelevant to that goal. As a result, the participants did not see her.
The above experiment corresponds to what is known as "inattentional blindness" (IB). This and other IB experiments dramatically demonstrate that unless people focus attention on some object in their visual field, they do not see it. Thus, what seems "open-and-obvious" in the aftermath of some event may not have been seen at the time of event.

If you are dealing with a slip-and-fall matter, you may want to order a reprint of the following article authored by Dr. Campbell.

Open-and-obvious under what conditions: American Journal of Forensic Psychology (In press). Order article #22, Cost $12.00).

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