Inattentional blindness (IB), the failure to notice something right in front of you, offers cognitive scientists and practitioners alike a unique means of studying the nature of visual perception. The present meta-analysis sought to provide the first synthesis of the two leading theories of IB—attention set and load theory. We aimed to estimate the magnitude of the effect of each, how they interact, and how task parameters moderate the magnitude of IB summary estimates. We further sought to address several theoretical issues that have persisted within this broad literature. A total of 317 effect sizes from 81 studies that had manipulated attention set or load were synthesized in a multilevel meta-analysis. Results indicated no significant difference between the attention set summary estimate (odds ratio [OR] = 3.26, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] [2.33, 4.57]) and the load summary estimate (OR = 1.75, 95% CI [1.10, 2.79]). Theoretical moderators included a difference between feature attention sets (OR = 5.02, 95% CI [2.95, 8.55]), semantic attention sets (OR = 2.64, 95% CI [1.64, 4.25]), and inherent sets (OR = 1.90, 95% CI [1.35, 2.68]), while perceptual load (OR = 2.55, 95% CI [1.66, 3.92]) and cognitive load (OR = 1.67, 95% CI [1.14, 2.44]) were more comparable. The primary task was found as a key task parameter that moderated summary estimates. The attention set summary estimate was moderated by the number of targets and distractors, whereas the load summary estimate was moderated by the full attention (FA) trial exclusion criterion. Analyses indicated any potential publication bias were overall not likely to impact our conclusions. We discuss the implications of results for a conceptual understanding of IB and how the phenomenon can be more reliably studied in future.

中文翻译：

---

两个理论的故事：注意力集和注意力不集中的负载理论的荟萃分析。

注意力不集中 (IB)，即未能注意到眼前的事物，为认知科学家和从业者提供了一种研究视觉感知本质的独特方法。目前的荟萃分析试图提供 IB 的两个主要理论——注意力集和负荷理论的第一个综合。我们旨在估计每个影响的大小，它们如何相互作用，以及任务参数如何调节 IB 总结估计的大小。我们进一步试图解决在这一广泛文献中一直存在的几个理论问题。在多层次荟萃分析中综合了来自 81 项操纵注意力集或负荷的研究的 317 个效应量。结果表明注意集汇总估计之间没有显着差异（优势比 [OR] = 3.26，95% 置信区间 [95% CI] [2.33, 4.57]) 和负载汇总估计 (OR = 1.75, 95% CI [1.10, 2.79])。理论调节因素包括特征注意集（OR = 5.02, 95% CI [2.95, 8.55]）、语义注意集（OR = 2.64, 95% CI [1.64, 4.25]）和固有集（OR = 1.90, 95% CI [1.35, 2.68])，而知觉负荷 (OR = 2.55, 95% CI [1.66, 3.92]) 和认知负荷 (OR = 1.67, 95% CI [1.14, 2.44]) 更具可比性。主要任务被发现是调节摘要估计的关键任务参数。注意集摘要估计由目标和干扰项的数量调节，而负载摘要估计由完全注意（FA）试验排除标准调节。分析表明，任何潜在的发表偏倚总体上不太可能影响我们的结论。