Reflexive attention attenuates change blindness (but only briefly)

Smith, D.T.; Schenk, T.

doi:10.3758/pp.70.3.489

Reflexive attention attenuates change blindness (but only briefly)

Smith, D.T.; Schenk, T.

Authors

Professor Dan Smith daniel.smith2@durham.ac.uk
Professor

T. Schenk

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.