Final answer:
The statement that inattentional blindness occurs due to a lack of attention rather than vision defects is True. This phenomenon means that individuals can miss visible changes in their environment when focused on other tasks.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that inattentional blindness happens when a person observing the system fails to notice a change in the environment is True. Inattentional blindness is a psychological phenomenon whereby an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits. It was famously demonstrated by Simons and Chabris in a study where many participants, while focused on counting basketball passes, failed to notice someone in a gorilla costume walking through the scene.
Another experiment supporting inattentional blindness involved subjects failing to notice a red cross on a computer screen because they were concentrating on other objects. This emphasizes that our perception is highly reliant on where our attention is directed. The peculiar condition of prosopagnosia, or face blindness, is loosely related in illustrating how attention and recognition play vital roles in our perception of the environment.