Abstract
Individuals with hemianopic field loss (HFL) fail to perceive visual information that falls within the blind portions of their visual field. This places additional burden on memory and attention to represent information in their blind visual field, which may make visual changes in the scene more difficult to detect. Failing to detect changes could have serious implications, especially in the context of driving. We used a driving simulator paradigm to test the hypothesis that individuals with HFL would be more susceptible to change blindness than those with normal visual fields (NV) A change blindness experiment was conducted (HFL, n=11; NV, n=10) where changes (i.e., pedestrians appearing) were triggered based on the driver’s gaze location. Pedestrians appeared equally on the left and right and were triggered to occur only when looking in the opposite direction from the side of the change. Gaze was tracked while driving and used to ensure that the location of the change was visible (in the seeing hemifield) before and after the change occurred. Those with HVFL had more change blindness than those with NV [18.0% v 9.4%, p=0.007] and more change blindness to pedestrians appearing in their blind than seeing hemifield [31.0% v 12.4%, p=0.01]. Further, there was more change blindness for events in the seeing hemifield for those with HFL than NV [p=0.046]. Consistent with our hypothesis, these results suggest that individuals with HFL are more susceptible to failures of awareness (e.g., change blindness) than individuals with NV, which may place them at higher risk for motor vehicle crashes where the driver fails to notice the other road user (looked-but-failed-to-see incidents).