Limits in Attention: Investigating Change Blindness in Visual Perception
Disciplines
Biological Psychology | Cognitive Psychology
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Change blindness, the inability to detect changes in a visual scene, reveals critical limitations in human visual perception. Research into change blindness contributes to our understanding of how attention is selectively allocated and how certain visual stimuli may escape detection, even in plain sight. It’s unclear whether certain types of stimuli, like stimuli that hold value, are differentially resistant to change blindness. The present study investigates this using a flicker paradigm, a well-established method in change blindness research, to examine reaction time differences between changes in neutral stimuli (e.g., a color shift) and value-driven stimuli (e.g., the appearance of money), each presented 50% of the time within various visual scenes. Participants will view a series of flickering scenes alternating between an original image and a modified version, separated by a blank black screen. Reaction times will be recorded upon change detection, categorized by stimulus type. In investigating whether change blindness is affected by value-driving stimuli we aim to better understand how learned associations and reward-driven attention influence visual processing. Reward-based learning strengthens associations between stimuli and their perceived importance, this leads us to expect that value-driven stimuli will be more likely to capture attention, be processed more efficiently than neutral changes, resulting in faster reaction times. If reaction times do not differ significantly between stimulus types, this would suggest the robustness of change blindness, indicating that even highly salient stimuli may go unnoticed in dynamic environments. This study contributes to broader discussions on the limits of human visual perception, cognitive efficiency in high-stakes environments, and potential applications of reward-based learning in enhancing focus and awareness.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
RCHSS - Psychological Science
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Chloe West-Jacobs
Limits in Attention: Investigating Change Blindness in Visual Perception
Change blindness, the inability to detect changes in a visual scene, reveals critical limitations in human visual perception. Research into change blindness contributes to our understanding of how attention is selectively allocated and how certain visual stimuli may escape detection, even in plain sight. It’s unclear whether certain types of stimuli, like stimuli that hold value, are differentially resistant to change blindness. The present study investigates this using a flicker paradigm, a well-established method in change blindness research, to examine reaction time differences between changes in neutral stimuli (e.g., a color shift) and value-driven stimuli (e.g., the appearance of money), each presented 50% of the time within various visual scenes. Participants will view a series of flickering scenes alternating between an original image and a modified version, separated by a blank black screen. Reaction times will be recorded upon change detection, categorized by stimulus type. In investigating whether change blindness is affected by value-driving stimuli we aim to better understand how learned associations and reward-driven attention influence visual processing. Reward-based learning strengthens associations between stimuli and their perceived importance, this leads us to expect that value-driven stimuli will be more likely to capture attention, be processed more efficiently than neutral changes, resulting in faster reaction times. If reaction times do not differ significantly between stimulus types, this would suggest the robustness of change blindness, indicating that even highly salient stimuli may go unnoticed in dynamic environments. This study contributes to broader discussions on the limits of human visual perception, cognitive efficiency in high-stakes environments, and potential applications of reward-based learning in enhancing focus and awareness.