I take my seat in the trendy, dimly lit restaurant, and
accept the menu from the waiter. I rummage in my purse, feeling for my phone. I
open a magnification app and turn the flashlight on, tweaking the settings for my
visual needs. I ask a friend to “orient me” by pointing out the menus
headings. I then spend the next several
minutes absorbed with the task.
I realize I’ve missed the conversation. I’m the last to
decide. Because I am only seeing a couple words at a time, I’ve been forming a
mental representation of the menu that I slowly fill in. I try to memorize
every item; memorizing is easier than rereading descriptions. I pan back to the
most appealing section. I try to “skim,” which for me means deciphering the
words most visually identifiable based on font, spacing, and length. I notice
the conversation lull.
I ask what others are getting, thinking I may just order the
same thing to make this task simpler. Yes, I’ll have what she’s having. I give
up on my search, shove my phone in my purse, and re-engage with the group.
Determining what to order at a restaurant requires focused attention; not
(entirely) because the decision is challenging; the process of reading a menu
is cognitively demanding.
It is obvious that low vision makes seeing more difficult.
This increased difficulty means using sight requires more attentional
resources. The process of magnifying, scanning, spatially orienting, and
memorizing is more cognitively demanding, and affects tasks relying on sight
including reading a menu, reviewing mail, filling out paperwork, or checking an
event in my calendar. By requiring additional attention and effort, these
seemingly simple tasks can distract me from what is happening around me.
Everyone becomes inattentive when cognitive resources are
allocated to another task. This experience is referred to as inattentional
blindness, a psychological term used to describe the phenomena of not
perceiving something in sight due to lack of attention, and not lack of
vision. Inattentional blindness is often
the source of lay psychology experiments; see a great example here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo).
In recent years, I’ve felt plagued by the propensity of my
actual blindness to exacerbate inattentional blindness. Millennials are
notorious for multitasking; texting, snapping, posting, tweeting, and more
while simultaneously out with friends, in class, or on vacation. I counteract this stereotype; I cannot casually respond to a facebook post at
dinner. I would have to turn up my brightness, not-so-subtly hold my phone 3 inches from my face, double-check word by word for typos, and inevitably miss almost ten minutes of conversation. As a result, I have often envied others’ engagement with their smart
phones, ability to read news articles in class, and facility to use multiple
windows at once on their computers.
I share this not to invoke pity or sympathy for the
additional attentional resources required of low vision. I certainly do not
wish to sound ungrateful for the countless ways adaptive technology improves my
daily experience. Instead, I wish to offer a positive reframing from which I
continue to learn. My inattentional blindness forces mindfulness. Because
the pitfalls of multitasking are more pronounced for me, I cannot feasibly
spend time perusing social media, responding to emails, or reading the news
when I am attending to something else.
Instead, I deliberately allocate the limited attentional
resources I have. I just returned from a long walk at the lake with my dog. I
spent 20 minutes catching up with family on the phone. I spent 10 minutes
listening to a podcast. I spent the remaining 30 minutes appreciating the
mountains, hearing the birds, and smelling the harbingers of rain. I still
enjoy my own form of multitasking at times, yet, most attempts are frankly too attentionally demanding. My attention is better allocated
elsewhere.
