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Perceptual load affects change blindness in a real‐world interaction
Author(s) -
Murphy Gillian,
Murphy Lisa
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3441
Subject(s) - change blindness , inattentional blindness , psychology , perception , blindness , conversation , affect (linguistics) , cognitive psychology , change detection , audiology , social psychology , developmental psychology , communication , optometry , neuroscience , medicine , computer science , computer vision
Summary Change blindness is the striking inability to detect seemingly obvious changes that occur between views of a scene. The current study assessed perceptual load as a factor that may affect change blindness for human faces. The study had participants ( n = 103) interact with a researcher in a testing room that imposed low or high perceptual load. Midway through the conversation, the researcher was replaced by another person. Thirty‐nine percent of participants failed to detect the change. There was a significant effect of perceptual load, with greater change detection under low load (71%) than high load (52%). This research suggests that the perceptual load imposed by a task may have a significant effect on the likelihood of change blindness and ought to be considered in future research.