The development of change blindness: Children's attentional priorities whilst viewing naturalistic scenes

Fletcher-Watson, S.; Colli, J.M.; Findlay, J.M.; Leekam, S.R.

Abstract

Change blindness describes the surprising difficulty of detecting large changes in visual scenes when changes occur during a visual disruption. In order to study the developmental course of this phenomenon, a modified version of the flicker paradigm, based on Rensink, O'Regan & Clark (1997), was given to three groups of children aged 6–12 years and to a group of adults. This paradigm tested the ability to detect single colour, presence/absence and location changes of both high and low semantic importance in a complex scene. Semantically important changes were detected more quickly and accurately than less semantically important changes, by all age groups, indicating that children had the same attentional priorities as adults. Older children achieved more efficient and accurate detection of changes than younger children and reached almost adult level at 10–12 years old. These improvements parallel age-related developments in attention and visual perception.

Citation

Fletcher-Watson, S., Colli, J., Findlay, J., & Leekam, S. (2009). The development of change blindness: Children's attentional priorities whilst viewing naturalistic scenes. Developmental Science, 12(3), 438-445. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00784.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Feb 17, 2009
• Publication Date: May 1, 2009
• Deposit Date: Sep 24, 2008
• Journal: Developmental Science
• Print ISSN: 1363-755X
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-7687
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 438-445
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00784.x
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1570654