I stared intensely inside the fridge. Now, where is the darn margarine?
It was there only yesterday. “Hon..” I shouted from the kitchen, “Where did you put the margarine?”
“It is in the fridge,” came the reply.
“No,” I insisted.
The significant other stormed into the kitchen and pointed her finger at the thing - the margarine!! I grinned sheepishly.. “Er, I didn’t see it awhile ago.. hmm.. how did it appear ah?”
On another occasion, I was staring inside the larder, trying to locate a box of cereal. Where did she put it?
“Hon,” I shouted from the kitchen. “I can’t find the cereal.”
“Did you look at the second shelf?” came the reply.
I said, “Yeah.. but no cereal box leh.”
Again, with her literally pointing at the thing, “Oh.. cereal,” I exclaimed.
Oh.. why didn’t I see it when it is just in front of me?
Obviously, this required further investigation.
I decided to Google for the cause of this problem.
Google responded:
Looking inside a refrigerator and failing to see an item that is right in front of you is colloquially or anecdotally referred to as refrigerator blindness, driven by a normal cognitive limitation in visual search.
It further elaborated on the 3 visual roadblocks.
When you look right at the item and miss it, your brain’s shortcut has accidentally backfired in one of three ways:
• The Blueprint Bug (Expectation Bias): You are looking for the yellow mustard bottle. However, your partner bought a new brand that comes in a brown jar. Because your brain is exclusively scanning for “yellow polygon shape,” it completely skips over the brown jar.
• The Camouflage Effect (Distraction): The item is sitting right next to something incredibly bright or visually loud (like a leftover pizza box with bold text). The louder item hogs all your brain’s processing power, leaving no room to notice the small jar next to it.
• The “Map” Glitch (Inattentional Blindness): You usually keep the butter on the top shelf. Someone moved it to the middle shelf. When you look at the middle shelf, you aren’t actually processing it because your brain is convinced it only needs to look at the top shelf.
Aiyoh!.. high sounding..
Anyway, the next time I can’t find something that is staring right at me, I know what to blame.
Not my eyesight.
Not my brain.
Senior blindness. 😂
Hon.. where is the margarine?
Er..Never mind. I’ll look again.