Illustration symbolizing inattentional deafness: a person struggling to hear an alarm in a visually overwhelming environment.

Missed Alarms: Why You're Not Hearing What You Should (and How to Fix It)

Reese Marlowe in Mind & Education September 2025 • 5 min read.

"New research reveals the surprising role of visual focus in auditory inattention and offers clues to designing safer, more intuitive warning systems."

Imagine a pilot, expertly navigating a landing, yet completely oblivious to a critical stall warning blaring in the cockpit. This isn't a scene from a disaster movie, but a real-life phenomenon known as 'inattentional deafness' – the failure to notice fully perceptible auditory stimuli when our attention is strongly focused elsewhere. While often studied in controlled lab settings, its implications are vast and can have deleterious consequences in complex real-life situations (e.g. healthcare, aviation).

For years, researchers have explored how limited cognitive resources and top-down attentional mechanisms contribute to this phenomenon. The central executive level may account for transient attentional impairments [19-22]. However, emerging evidence suggests another key player: visual dominance. With our visually driven world, is it possible that what we see directly impacts what we hear, or rather, what we fail to hear?

New research from ISAE-SUPAERO, Université de Toulouse, France, is shedding light on this cross-modal interplay, particularly in high-stakes environments like aviation. By examining inter-individual differences, electrophysiological signatures, and single-trial classification, this study not only deepens our understanding of inattentional deafness but also paves the way for innovative solutions to mitigate its risks.

The Pilot Study: Unpacking Visual Dominance and Auditory Misses

Illustration symbolizing inattentional deafness: a person struggling to hear an alarm in a visually overwhelming environment.

To investigate the link between visual dominance and inattentional deafness, researchers conducted a study involving thirteen aircraft pilots. Equipped with a 32-channel EEG system, the pilots were immersed in a motion flight simulator, facing both low and high workload scenarios. The high-workload scenario required them to land the aircraft with limited visibility (due to cabin fire and smoke), while the low-workload scenario was supervised by the autopilot.

Throughout these simulations, pilots were presented with auditory 'oddball' tasks – rare auditory targets amidst a stream of standard sounds – while their brain activity was meticulously recorded. Before the flight simulation, each participant underwent cognitive screening, including assessments of their working memory span and susceptibility to visual dominance.

Workload Matters: The behavioral results clearly demonstrated that pilots missed a significant 57.7% of auditory alarms in the difficult, high-workload condition. This highlights how increased cognitive demands can drastically impair auditory attention.
Visual Dominance Takes the Lead: Surprisingly, among all the capabilities evaluated, only the visual dominance index proved to be a reliable predictor of the miss rate in the high-pressure scenario. The more susceptible a pilot was to visual dominance, the more likely they were to miss critical auditory alarms.
Brain Activity Tells the Story: The electrophysiological analyses revealed a distinct neural signature of inattentional deafness. Missed alarms, compared to correctly detected ones, were associated with a significant reduction in the amplitude of early perceptual (N100) and late attentional (P3a and P3b) event-related potential components.

These findings suggest that visual dominance may play a more significant role in inattentional deafness than previously thought. The amplitude reduction of event-related potential indicated a decrease in processing auditory information that could lead to inability to automatically shift attention to the alarm. This indicates the necessity of improving passive brain-computer interfaces (pBCIs) to improve classification of auditory processing.

From Research to Real-World Solutions: Detecting and Mitigating Auditory Inattention

Beyond understanding the mechanisms, this research explored the feasibility of detecting inattentional deafness in real-time using EEG-based processing. By implementing a processing pipeline, researchers achieved a 72.2% mean accuracy in discriminating missed from hit auditory alarms.

This opens the door to developing adaptive systems that can monitor a user's cognitive state and adjust warning signals accordingly. For example, in a cockpit setting, if a pilot's EEG indicates a high likelihood of missing an auditory alarm, the system could switch to a visual or tactile alert to ensure the critical information is received. Future experiments should integrate more realistic alarms relevant to the flying task and the analysis of the flight performance that could also be used to improve the classification algorithm to predict inattentional deafness.

While further research is needed to refine these technologies and explore their application in various domains, this study provides a crucial step toward creating safer, more human-centered environments where critical information is never missed.

About this Article -

This article was crafted using a human-AI hybrid and collaborative approach. AI assisted our team with initial drafting, research insights, identifying key questions, and image generation. Our human editors guided topic selection, defined the angle, structured the content, ensured factual accuracy and relevance, refined the tone, and conducted thorough editing to deliver helpful, high-quality information.See our About page for more information.

This article is based on research published under:

DOI-LINK: 10.1016/j.bbr.2018.11.045, Alternate LINK

Title: Inattentional Deafness To Auditory Alarms: Inter-Individual Differences, Electrophysiological Signature And Single Trial Classification

Subject: Behavioral Neuroscience

Journal: Behavioural Brain Research

Publisher: Elsevier BV

Authors: F. Dehais, R.N. Roy, S. Scannella

Published: 2019-03-01

Everything You Need To Know

What is inattentional deafness, and what are its implications?

Inattentional deafness is a phenomenon where a person fails to notice an auditory stimulus, even though it is fully perceptible, because their attention is focused elsewhere. This typically happens when the person is engaged in a visually demanding task. Its implications are vast and can have deleterious consequences in complex real-life situations like healthcare and aviation.

What role does visual dominance play in missing auditory alarms?

The research found that visual dominance is a significant factor in missing auditory alarms. The study revealed that pilots who were more susceptible to visual dominance were more likely to miss auditory alarms in high-workload scenarios. The research conducted by ISAE-SUPAERO, Université de Toulouse, France, used EEG to measure brain activity and found distinct neural signatures linked to inattentional deafness. This indicates that when the visual focus is high, the brain doesn't process auditory information effectively, leading to missed alarms.

How was the pilot study designed, and what were its main findings?

The pilot study, conducted using a flight simulator, involved aircraft pilots navigating both low and high-workload scenarios. The pilots were subjected to auditory 'oddball' tasks while their brain activity was recorded. The behavioral results indicated that pilots missed 57.7% of auditory alarms in the high-workload condition. Additionally, the research revealed that visual dominance was a reliable predictor of the miss rate. These findings highlight how increased cognitive demands and visual focus can impair auditory attention, emphasizing the need for better auditory warning systems.

What brain activity changes are associated with inattentional deafness?

The electrophysiological analyses revealed specific brain wave patterns linked to inattentional deafness. The study noted a reduction in the amplitude of early perceptual (N100) and late attentional (P3a and P3b) event-related potential components when alarms were missed. These event-related potential components indicate that the brain isn't fully processing the auditory information when visual attention is high. Improving passive brain-computer interfaces (pBCIs) could improve classification of auditory processing, potentially leading to systems that detect and mitigate inattentional deafness.

How can the research findings be applied to improve real-world safety?

Researchers explored the possibility of detecting inattentional deafness in real-time using EEG-based processing. A processing pipeline was implemented to discriminate between missed and hit auditory alarms with a mean accuracy of 72.2%. This research paves the way for real-world solutions to mitigate the risks of inattentional deafness. It allows for the development of systems that can detect when a person is likely to miss an auditory alarm and potentially adjust the warning system to capture their attention more effectively.