Crossmodal change blindness between vision and touch

Change blindness is the name given to people's inability to detect changes introduced between two consecutively-presented scenes when they are separated by a distractor that masks the transients that are typically associated with change. Change blindness has been reported within vision, audition, and touch, but has never before been investigated when successive patterns are presented to different sensory modalities. In the study reported here, we investigated change detection performance when the two to-be-compared stimulus patterns were presented in the same sensory modality (i.e., both visual or both tactile) and when one stimulus pattern was tactile while the other was presented visually or vice versa. The two to-be-compared patterns were presented consecutively, separated by an empty interval, or else separated by a masked interval. In the latter case, the masked interval could either be tactile or visual. The first experiment investigated visual-tactile and tactile-visual change detection performance. The results showed that in the absence of masking, participants detected changes in position accurately, despite the fact that the two to-be-compared displays were presented in different sensory modalities. Furthermore, when a mask was presented between the two to-be-compared displays, crossmodal change blindness was elicited no matter whether the mask was visual or tactile. The results of two further experiments showed that performance was better overall in the unimodal (visual or tactile) conditions than in the crossmodal conditions. These results suggest that certain of the processes underlying change blindness are multisensory in nature. We discuss these findings in relation to recent claims regarding the crossmodal nature of spatial attention.     

Visual long-term memory and change blindness: Different effects of pre- and post-change information on one-shot change detection using meaningless geometric objects

To clarify the relationship between visual long-term memory (VLTM) and online visual processing, we investigated whether and how VLTM involuntarily affects the performance of a one-shot change detection task using images consisting of six meaningless geometric objects. In the study phase, participants observed pre-change (Experiment 1), post-change (Experiment 2), or both pre- and post-change (Experiment 3) images appearing in the subsequent change detection phase. In the change detection phase, one object always changed between pre- and post-change images and participants reported which object was changed. Results showed that VLTM of pre-change images enhanced the performance of change detection, while that of post-change images decreased accuracy. Prior exposure to both pre- and post-change images did not influence performance. These results indicate that pre-change information plays an important role in change detection, and that information in VLTM related to the current task does not always have a positive effect on performance.     

Hide-and-seek around the centre of interest: The dead zone of attention revealed by change blindness

Three experiments examined spatial allocation of attention during active search for visual changes. In all experiments, there were three conditions of change location related to a centre of interest: (1) Central (most attended location itself), (2) near, and (3) far marginal change. In Experiment 1, participants showed the slowest search and the largest number of undetected changes in near condition. Moreover, they misidentified near changes more frequently than central and far ones. In Experiment 2, participants had to search for marginal changes in the presence of a once noticed central change that summoned additional attention to a central location. It resulted in further search slowing for near changes. In Experiment 3, participants searched for one of two concurrent marginal changes in the presence of a central one. They detected far changes about 2.3 times more frequently than near ones. Taken together, these results support the notion of “dead zone of attention” surrounding attentional focus. Several speculations about the nature of dead zone are discussed.     

Seeing changes: How familiarity alters our perception of change

The impact of object familiarity on change blindness was examined. Familiarity was operationalized by manipulating the orientation (upright vs. inverted) of letters: Upright letters formed familiar stimuli whereas inverted letters produced unfamiliar stimuli. Across four experiments, orientation was shown to affect the ability to detect change. In Experiment 1, the orientation effect was independent of the number of distractors (set size), suggesting that orientation and set size affect separate processes. In Experiment 1b, it was shown that the orientation effect did not depend on the alternation of a particular letter pair. In Experiment 2 an interaction between set size and stimulus quality suggests that set size has its effects early in processing, whereas additivity between stimulus quality and orientation suggests that orientation has an effect on later processing. Experiment 3 replicates and extends the findings from Experiments 1 and 2. A stage model of change blindness is proposed and extended by drawing on constructs from Rensink (2000b, 2002, 2005).     

High perceptual load causes inattentional blindness and deafness in drivers

ABSTRACT

Perceptual load theory of attention predicts that the level of perceptual load in a primary task affects the processing of additional stimuli. Given the lack of ecologically valid evidence for the model, the current study assessed the effect of perceptual load on driver awareness during simulated driving tasks. The results showed that perceptual load dramatically affected driver awareness for visual and auditory stimuli, even those that were driving relevant and safety critical (e.g. pedestrians or the sound of a car horn). The results support load theory and suggest that perceptual load may be an important factor in driver safety.     

Differential activation of a central inhibition system by motion and colour distractors

ABSTRACT

The selection of relevant stimuli is partially achieved through inhibition of irrelevant distractors. Using the distractor induced blindness (DIB) paradigm, we investigated whether these inhibitory processes depend on the feature dimension that is used to define distractors. Following a pilot study that found motion and colour targets to be comparably salient, we analysed distractor effects of those two feature dimensions. In both feature dimensions, an inhibition effect depended on the number of distractors. Colour, however, was more sensitive to distractor episodes as compared to motion: The level of inhibition was more pronounced, and its activation required less distractors. The results of a control experiment provided further evidence that, in fact, the feature dimension -instead of design differences between tasks- is responsible for this observation. The dimension-sensitive bias in the activation of a central inhibition system may be attributed to a differential processing of visual signals, depending on their behavioural relevance.     

Aversive images cause less perceptual interference among violent video game players: evidence from emotion-induced blindness

ABSTRACT

Previous research has assessed links between violent video game playing, aggression, and desensitization in the moral domain, but here we find that frequent violent video game play additionally may be linked with differences in perceptual processing. In an emotion-induced blindness task – wherein graphic images typically outcompete and impair perception of targets – violent video game players suffered less perceptual disruption following aversive images than non-players did, despite no group difference following neutral images. This difference persisted when controlling for sex and other violent media consumption and despite no group differences in trait aggression, disgust propensity, or disgust sensitivity. Importantly, the recruitment method ensured that participants were not aware of links between the experiment and their videogame playing history. Although a causal relationship has yet to be established, the findings suggest that violent video game players might sometimes, literally see the world differently.     

Retrieval independence between parts and wholes in successive recognition tasks

Participants studied AB word pairs and completed three recognition tests. In one recognition test each A word was presented with two distractors that did not appear on the study list. In another recognition test each B word was presented with two distractors that did not appear on the study list. In a third recognition test an AB target was presented with two distractors composed of words not on the study list. Six different groups of participants each performed the recognition tests in a different order, so that all possible orders were tested. Recognition of the A, B, and AB targets for a given study pair were independent of each other when single-word recognition preceded double-word recognition. There was almost complete independence in the reverse order. Even when recognition judgements were restricted to those for which the participants were most confident, there was independence of recognition among the three tests. A pair recognition test served as an additional study trial for the individual words; however, the reverse was not the case. All of these results were predicted by a single three-parameter mathematical model derived from the hypothesis that single-word and double-word targets had independent representations in memory.     

Examining effects of preconscious mere exposure: An inattentional blindness approach

An increase in affective preference for stimuli, which a person has been repeatedly exposed to, is known as mere exposure effect. This effect has been shown for stimuli that are processed subliminally, that is, below the threshold of awareness. This study fills a current research gap by investigating mere exposure effects under processing that is preconscious, which follows from a high stimulus strength but absence of top-down amplification. In three experiments (N = 240 in total) preconscious processing was evoked using an inattentional blindness paradigm, which allowed the processing of stimuli (nonwords or Chinese symbols) under complete inattention. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find a mere exposure effect in our experiments. We expand the current state of knowledge by discussing the distractor devaluation effect and the attentional set of participants as possible reasons for the absence of the mere exposure effect. Directions for future investigations are outlined.     

Choice Blindness and Preference Change: You Will Like This Paper Better If You (Believe You) Chose to Read It!

Choice blindness is the finding that participants both often fail to notice mismatches between their decisions and the outcome of their choice and, in addition, endorse the opposite of their chosen alternative. But do these preference reversals also carry over to future choices and ratings? To investigate this question, we gave participants the task of choosing which of a pair of faces they found most attractive. Unknown to them, we sometimes used a card trick to exchange one face for the other. Both decision theory and common sense strongly suggest that most people would easily notice such a radical change in the outcome of a choice. But that was not the case: no more than a third of the exchanges were detected by the participants. We also included a second round of choices using the same face pairs, and two stages of post‐choice attractiveness ratings of the faces. This way we were able to measure preference strength both as choice consistency and by looking at measures of rating differences between chosen and rejected options. We found that the initially rejected faces were chosen more frequently in the second choice, and the perceived attractiveness of these faces was increased even in uncoupled individual ratings at the end of the experiment. This result is discussed in relation to Chen and Risen's recent criticism of the Free Choice Paradigm, as it shows that choices can affect future preferences. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.