The effects of scene inversion on change blindness

J Gen Psychol. 2000 Jan;127(1):27-43. doi: 10.1080/00221300009598569.

Abstract

In two experiments, participants searched for a difference between two views of a scene. In Experiment 1, the authors extended the change-blindness findings from previous work by R. A. Rensink, J. K. O'Regan, and J. J. Clark (1997), which used an experimenter-induced global transient, to a less artificial situation in which participants searched for a difference in a pair of photographic images presented simultaneously. To examine the idea that meaning-driven endogenous orienting was responsible for the previously observed advantage for changes in center-of-interest items, the authors inverted half of the image pairs. The advantage for center-of-interest items was replicated with upright displays, but it was completely eliminated by inversion, strongly supporting the role of meaning-driven endogenous orienting in this task. With flickering displays (Experiment 2), the center-of-interest effect was completely unaffected by inversion. The authors suggest that when change blindness is induced via flicker, scene modifications are typically found by stimulus-driven rather than by meaning-driven processes.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Environment*
  • Female
  • Fixation, Ocular / physiology
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Reaction Time
  • Saccades / physiology
  • Visual Perception / physiology*