What is Change Blindness?

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As humans with complex categorical tendencies and visual-attentional systems, we assume that our visual representations of the world around us are accurate. Previous research provides an explanation of how what we see is a watered-down version of the world around us, and specifically, how the phenomenon of change blindness assists that. Change blindness describes the experience of not noticing objects that are in our visual field, particularly due to an allocation of attention on the part of the individual. It has been found in past studies that whether a stimulus is in the center of the visual field or in the periphery makes a difference in how change blindness is experienced, in that centrally located changes have been found to be more apparent than changes in the peripheral area. Our study tests change blindness in college aged participants exposed to alternating images, in measuring their accuracy in describing what the change in addition to the speed with which the change is noticed. The testing variables include the type of change (location change, color and presence) and the location that these changes take place (central versus peripheral). We predicted that changes in color would be most accurately and quickly identified, and that object change taking place centrally would also be noticed quicker and with more accuracy. Consenting participants were shown an alternation of an image and its modified version (interposed by a black screen) producing a flickering effect. Subjects observed this until they indicated change recognition. Speed and accuracy were compared and measured for all variables. We found that a change in color was the most reliably and quickly reported, followed by changes in presence and changes in location...

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...erent factors may affect how, when, and to what extent change blindness occurs. In doing so, we are interested in the reaction times and accuracy of subjects in identifying a difference between an original and altered image. Other implications that we aim to replicate are the effects of the type of change including: how the changed object in question is positioned (centrally or peripherally), as well as which types of specific differences lend themselves to be better noticed or ignored (changing the color of an object, and the presence or absence of an object). We hypothesize that there will be a significant effect displayed in correspondence to color changes, in both accuracy and speed. Also, we hypothesize that changes made to the color or mere presence of an object will be significantly more noticeable when centrally viewed, as opposed to those in the periphery.

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