Abstract
Change detection paradigms can provide insights into the deployment of attention in complex scenes. In a study presented at VSS 2001, we reported that observers detected changes in human behavior more frequently than they reported changes in human appearance. In the current studies, we investigated whether this pattern of detection reflects the salience of human behavior or a more general deployment of attention to dynamic events. We created short videos in which we embedded unusual abrupt changes in human behavior (e.g., a change in gait) or appearance (e.g., a change in clothing) as well as comparable changes in the behavior of objects (e.g., a change in rotation) or the appearance of objects (e.g., a change in color). Observers reported anomalous events after watching the videos. Preliminary analyses suggest that attention and recollection reflect an interaction between animacy (person vs object) and change (behavior vs appearance).