Final answer:
The theory of cont. neglect or inattentional blindness refers to the failure to notice something fully visible due to attention being focused on another task. Demonstrated in psychological studies, this phenomenon explains how selective attention can lead to significant oversights and absentmindedness.
Step-by-step explanation:
Theory of Cont. Neglect and Inattentional Blindness
The theory of cont. neglect, also known as inattentional blindness, is a psychological phenomenon where a person fails to notice an unexpected item in their visual field because their attention or orientation is focused on another task, event, or object. This was notably demonstrated in an experiment by Simons and Chabris (1999) where participants, intensely focused on counting basketball passes between players wearing white shirts, failed to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking across the scene. A similar experiment by Most et al. (2000) found that when a red cross unexpectedly passed across a screen, one third of participants did not notice it because they were instructed to focus on either white or black objects, ignoring the other color.
These examples highlight how our perception can be starkly limited by where our attention is directed. This selective attention can also lead to absentmindedness, where memory lapses occur due to breaks in attention or focus being elsewhere, such as forgetting whether one has returned a temporary identification like Cynthia, a psychologist, experienced.