Reflexive attention attenuates change blindness (but only briefly)

Smith, D.T.; Schenk, T.

Abstract

Humans are remarkably insensitive to large changes in a visual display if the change occurs simultaneously with a secondary perceptual event. A widely held view is that this change blindness occurs because the secondary perceptual event prevents the change from capturing attention. However, whereas some studies have shown that top-down attentional priming can attenuate change blindness, the evidence regarding the effect of bottom-up attentional capture on change blindness is less clear-cut. Here, we compare the effects of attentional capture on change detection with participants’ performance on a well-established attentional paradigm (a Posner-style cuing task). Experiment 1 established the time course of attentional capture in our paradigm. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this attentional capture was associated with facilitated change detection at short (150-msec),but not long (480-msec), latencies. These data show that reflexive attentional shifts facilitate change detection and are consistent with the view that shifts of attention are a necessary precondition for visual awareness.

Citation

Smith, D., & Schenk, T. (2008). Reflexive attention attenuates change blindness (but only briefly). Perception & psychophysics, 70(3), 489-495. https://doi.org/10.3758/pp.70.3.489

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2008
• Deposit Date: Oct 12, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 29, 2010
• Journal: Perception and psychophysics.
• Print ISSN: 0031-5117
• Electronic ISSN: 1532-5962
• Publisher: Psychonomic Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 70
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 489-495
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/pp.70.3.489
• Keywords: Attention, Awareness, Motion, IOR, Saccade.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1563445