Change Blindness is the failure to detect a change made to a scene or object between views. It is often considered to be caused by a lack of attention. However, could the physiological limitations of vision also contribute to this phenomenon? This study had participants look for differences between two images while recording their eye movements with an eye tracker. We found that when participants were given more time to search for changes, they found significantly more changes. However, the number of changes found only increased for changes which the participants looked at directly. This suggests that there is a physiological as well as an attentional contribution to change blindness.
Authors: Elisabeth Niederman, Ben D. Sawyer, and P. A. Hancock
Presented at the Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence at UCF