title: Detecting changes in real-world objects: The relationship between visual long-term memory and change blindness.
abstract: A large body of literature has shown that observers often fail to notice significant changes in visual scenes, even when these changes happen right in front of their eyes. For instance, people often fail to notice if their conversation partner is switched to another person, or if large background objects suddenly disappear.1,2 These 'change blindness' studies have led to the inference that the amount of information we remember about each item in a visual scene may be quite low.1 However, in recent work we have demonstrated that long-term memory is capable of storing a massive number of visual objects with significant detail about each item.3 In the present paper we attempt to reconcile these findings by demonstrating that observers do not experience 'change blindness' with the real world objects used in our previous experiment if they are given sufficient time to encode each item. The results reported here suggest that one of the major causes of change blindness for real-world objects is a lack of encoding time or attention to each object (see also refs. 4 and 5).
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cambridge, Massachusetts USA.
authors.forename: Timothy F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Brady
authors.forename: Talia
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Konkle
authors.forename: Aude
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Oliva
authors.forename: George A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Alvarez
references.citation: Q J Exp Psychol. 1973 May;25(2):207-22
references.pmid: 4515818
references.citation: Trends Cogn Sci. 1997 Oct;1(7):261-7
references.pmid: 21223921
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2004 Jun;30(3):519-37
references.pmid: 15161384
references.citation: Nature. 1997 Nov 20;390(6657):279-81
references.pmid: 9384378
references.citation: Behav Brain Sci. 2001 Feb;24(1):87-114; discussion 114-85
references.pmid: 11515286
references.citation: Can J Psychol. 1992 Sep;46(3):461-88
references.pmid: 1486554
references.citation: Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Jan;9(1):16-20
references.pmid: 15639436
references.citation: Behav Brain Sci. 2001 Oct;24(5):939-73; discussion 973-1031
references.pmid: 12239892
references.citation: Psychol Sci. 2007 Jul;18(7):622-8
references.pmid: 17614871
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Gen. 2009 Nov;138(4):487-502
references.pmid: 19883132
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Sep 23;105(38):14325-9
references.pmid: 18787113
references.citation: Psychol Sci. 2004 Feb;15(2):106-11
references.pmid: 14738517