Inattentional incoherence blindness: If the world were to “glitch,” would we even be capable of detecting it?

Previous research has shown that perceptual and semantic inconsistencies, as well as discrepancies between our memories and later information, can go unnoticed. Going a step further, the present study investigates whether adults can detect logical impossibilities in sequences of events they personally experience. Participants wrote a personal four-digit code in one location, which then appeared to be known to an experimenter elsewhere through a magician’s trick. Across two experiments ( N = 44 each), conducted with adult undergraduate students, we examined participants’ detection of the inconsistency and memory of the event. Results show that most participants failed to notice the incoherence unless it was explicitly highlighted, and they did not reconstruct the event in memory. We discuss this yet unknown human limitation: inattentional incoherence blindness.