The effect of cueing on change blindness and same blindness

Abstract

We used the change blindness paradigm of Landman, Spekreijse, and Lamme (2003) to measure the effect of cues on the ability to detect changes between two presentations of an array of eight rectangles separated by an interstimulus interval (ISI). Next, we measured the ability to detect sameness as the target rectangle remained the same when all of the others changed orientation. We were surprised to find no difference between change-detection and same-detection performance. These results (1) are consistent with the notion that some kind of internal representation was cued during the ISI, (2) mitigate against the recruitment of grouping strategies and/or forming a Gestalt, and (3) imply that under conditions facilitated by cues same-detection performance can be as good as change-detection performance.

Keywords:

• Attention
• Change blindness
• Cueing
• Same blindness
• Vision

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank George Rodis, Paul Coster, and Alan Woodford for their technical support, and Karen Adams, Julie Baldwin, Alan Woodford, and Jon Slack for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.