Change Blindness Essay

Discussion
The current study supports the hypothesis that change blindness varies depending on the type of change made within an everyday scene. Even though the distraction of the flicker method was used, participants correct scores were highest in the congruent change condition, an object that is replaced with another that is in keeping with the scene was easier to spot. This may be due to the images and objects being of familiarity to the participant. The scenes used were in the kitchen, bedroom, office, and the objects in this condition were exchanged with objects of the same context. Therefore, this may have made it easier to spot the change. The reason for this is because the scenes and objects are of familiarity, we encounter them daily.
Anne Treisman’s (1980), feature of integration theory (FIT), may help explain this. This theory suggests attention acts as the glue which would help identify a change within a scene. She suggests focused attention must be directed serially one after the other, to
Participants were asked to drive in a simulator while talking on a mobile telephone, (a distraction). It was documented that those participants, compared to non-phone users, missed traffic signals, billboard displays and showed later breaking times when faced with unexpected events, similar to the unexpected item in the in-congruent change. It was suggested participants on the phone diverted spare attention to attend to their phone call, the conversation acted as a distraction. Further evidence in this experiment through eye- tracking found participants from each condition viewed the same proportion of signals, but failed to see them. This adds value to the previous findings, the type of change along with the distraction equally have an influence on focused attention, working and short-term memory, which may effect change