Abstract
Observers often fail to notice large changes to scenes, a phenomenon known as change blindness. However, even if observers do not report such changes, they may recognize the changed object. In addition, observers' ability to detect changes may be influenced by the way they search the scene. With the use of a motion picture and a recognition memory test, the current experiment manipulated the strategies observers used in their search. In the video, a female actor asks for directions, and upon a cut in camera angle, two features change in color. In two conditions, observers were instructed to search for a cue that may or may not appear on the female actor. Observers were to report either the region of the actor's body (spatial condition) the cue appeared on or the color of the object that it appeared on (feature condition). In the third condition (conceptual condition), observers were to watch the actor and determine if she understood the directions she was given. Overall, observers in the feature condition were most likely to detect the change, observers in the conceptual condition were least likely to detect the change and observers in the spatial condition were in the middle. Recognition performance, in the feature condition was significantly higher for “hitters” compared to that for “missers.” In the spatial condition, recognition performance was equally high for both “hitters” and “missers.” Recognition performance in the conceptual condition was intermediate, with no differences between “hitters” and “missers.” The results indicate that a strategy that focuses on coding features (like in the feature condition) aids in change detection, but a more global search (like that in the spatial and conceptual conditions) aids in creating a representation. Overall, it appears that memory for visual features is related to change detection, but does not determine it. In addition, representation and comparison are dissociable processes in change detection.