Factors That Influence Change Blindness

Change blindness is a strange phenomenon which occurs when a visual change in the environment goes unnoticed by the observer, even if the change is large or obvious. This can be particularly dangerous in times when vision and ability to react to changes around us is imperative to our safety, such as when driving. An occurrence of change blindness while driving could cause an accident if it is not detected fast enough. There are many contributors to detection of change which have been studied by previous researchers including the importance of the object changed, how focused the observer is, and how the change comes about. In this study we focused on two other factors that can influence change blindness and sought to determine whether distractions
(2000) and Fletcher-Watson et al. (2009), which used flickering still photos, the study conducted by Levin and Simons (1997) utilized motion pictures to demonstrate change blindness. Researchers wanted to investigate whether change blindness occurred not only with trivial objects in pictures but also with objects at the center of a viewer’s attention in moving pictures. Participants included 60 students (no gender breakdown given) who attended Cornell and received candy or course credit in exchange for participation. Participants in Experiment 1 were asked to watch a video which contained a change after each editing cut and were then asked what changes, if any, they had noticed. Following this they watched the video a second time and were instructed to find the change after each cut. In Experiment 2A five participants at a time watched eight short videos where the actor was switched out with a similar looking person during a scene cut and then were asked to write a description of what they watched. Those who did not mention a change in actors were asked if they noticed the switch. Experiment 2B was set up in the same way as Experiment 2A, however participants in this experiment watched eight additional videos with no changes, for a total of 16 videos, and were warned to pay attention for the change and record whether or not one was present. Levin and Simons (1997) found that only one participant noticed any changes in the
However, unlike previous studies we also determined whether having a distraction present also had an impact on ability to detect change. The distraction we tested in this study was the presence or absence of music. It is hypothesized that participants will take longer to find the addition or deletion of an object in a picture than any color changes or position changes made. Furthermore, participants in the music listening condition will take longer to identify the change present in the picture due to them being distracted by other stimuli, in this case music, and so they do not have the attention necessary to notice the changes in pictures as