Attentional filtering of transients allows for a recovery from change blindness.
Previous reports suggest that introducing distracting visual transients during a change-detection task can result in change blindness. In four experiments, we found that presenting the distracting transients repeatedly prior to the change produces a recovery from change blindness. This recovery from change blindness is not due solely to low-level neural adaptation of transient detectors, but instead seems to be based on attentional filtering of the distracting transient signals. This attentional filtering can be object-based rather than location-based. In addition, we found that the ability to achieve this attentional filtering depends critically on presenting the to-be-ignored transient signals prior to the time of the change.
Becker
Mark W
MW
Department of Psychology, Lewis & Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR 97219, USA. becker54@msu.edu
Vera
Sara
S
D000221:Adaptation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001766:Blindness; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time