Difference between object blindness and poor eyesight?

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I have severe object blindness. Like yesterday I went into the post office with my friend, and she had to write a cheque but she forgot the date, so she said, ''go and have a quick look on the calender over there, it'd say the date'', but I panicked because I couldn't see no calender, so I nervously got out my phone and said, ''no, no....I can look on my phone for the date....it's here.'' I just didn't want to go wondering around in search for something that is probably right in front of me and my friend yelling, ''it's right there, Jo, right in front of you, look, there!!'' because, you've got to admit, it is embarrassing, especially if there are lots of other people about.

But usually when I can't see an object, people say, ''it's your eyesight - you need glasses!'' But I know it's not that at all, it's a different thing. It's to do with lack of confidence and something in my brain. Probably to do with stupidity aswell, well, it makes me look stupid.

Does anyone else think it's something to do with eyesight, or is it a different thing all together? Because my eyesight is pretty average.

This is a sensory processing issue and has nothing to do with being stupid or having poor eyesight, though obviously if you do have poor eyesight it only makes things worse. The human brain is incapable of processing everything you see at once. There is simply too much information. It uses all sorts of clever tricks to ignore the vast majority of what you see and concentrate on the important details. Many autistics have difficulty with this. Either their brain filters out too much - so you don't see something even though you are looking directly at it - or it doesn't filter out enough and you end up with sensory overload. The same happens for the other senses. This thread covers a similar issue with hearing.

I have similar issues with sight and sound. As you say it is frustrating to look for something and be unable to spot it even though it is easily visible. Once you do spot it you wonder how on earth you could have missed it.

It's absolutely, 100% a mind issue and not eye sight problems. I have object blindness, or even static/fluid spatial disorientation, which is a fairly new thing being researched.

Here's how I'd describe it: If most people look at their surroundings in live action, and actually see things entering and leaving their field of vision, I "take a still shot" of the room, then retain it for use in navigating the room, in a way. My mind is then busy with other things, and does not accept "updated" pictures of the room sometimes, unless I call for it. The result is that I'll literally not see a person or an obstacle which was placed there in my way, after the last snap shot was sent to my brain. So I fall right into it, sometimes actually getting hurt (or bumping & bruising the other person if that's what I crash into). Fortunately I can voluntarily re-shoot my vision at any time, and as often as needed, such as when driving or working with something moving and dangerous. These accidents happen 98% of the time in the house, when a chair is moved, or something like that. Or at the store one time, I was in line, and turned to get something out of my cart to put on the counter, and somehow a police woman was right in front of me, and I knocked her down flat on the floor and broke her glasses. I just didn't see her there, and she says she had been there for a minute at least. Her police partner was already there in line in front of me, who I saw of course, but she had run back for a last item, and returned "between my snapshots". She wasn't seriously hurt, and didn't blame me, which was very nice. VERY embarrassing!


The object blindness is very much part of my life too. I get very frustrated when I am asked to grab something off a table, and it's NOT THERE... JUST NOT THERE! Then they walk over and pick it up like magic, and they think I was being funny or something.

Charles

It's got more to do with you mind, than your eyesight.

I have poor eyesight & that issue. I think having extremely low vision all my life is part of the cause for my object blindness. I never payed attention to visual stuff like most partly due to my sh***y vision & I also have problems paying attention(I zone out a lot) so perhaps my ability to process what I do see is underdeveloped due to getting less use. I tried explaining this to a couple medical professionals I saw(psych, neurologist, vision doc) & they didn't understand what I was trying to explain. They thought it was just my bad vision & issues with focusing & remembering but it's more than that. My mind doesn't process everything my eyes can see when I am paying attention. I could look directly at something my eyes have no problems seeing while I am looking for it & not register it rite away.

That is interesting. Human eyesight is only detailed in a small area. You build up an internal image of your surroundings by continually looking around. Most people's eyes keep jumping from point to point to add detail to this internal image and update any changes. If you detect movement in your peripheral vision you will immediately look in that direction to update your internal image with this new change. This is all completely automatic and you are unaware of it happening.

By the way as a side note one of the reasons you don't notice your eyes flicking around is that you actually turn off your vision while your eyes are moving. You are effectively blind during that time. You can test this quite easily. Look at something then look at something else nearly. You should see a blur as your eyes move from one point to another but the transition appears to be seamless and instant.

Again to save processing power your brain relies a lot on experience and prediction to analyze what you see. When you first glance at something your brain builds a very rough model of what it expects to see then updates this model as visual information is processed. Expected objects in your field of view are recognized more quickly than unexpected ones because your brain can quickly add them to the model. In some situations this can be very dangerous. A fairly common type of motorcycle accident happens where a car pulls out directly in front of the bike. As bikes are far less common than cars, at a quick glance your brain may not actually register that a bike is present because it expects to see cars.