Change blindness, aging, and cognition

Abstract

Change blindness (CB), the inability to detect changes in visual scenes, may increase with age and early Alzheimer's disease (AD). To test this hypothesis, participants were asked to localize changes in natural scenes. Dependent measures were response time (RT), hit rate, false positives (FP), and true sensitivity (d′). Increased age correlated with increased sensitivity and RT; AD predicted even slower RT. Accuracy and RT were negatively correlated. Differences in FP were nonsignificant. CB correlated with impaired attention, working memory, and executive function. Advanced age and AD were associated with increased CB, perhaps due to declining memory and attention. CB could affect real-world tasks, like automobile driving.

Keywords:

• Automobile driving
• Change detection
• Cognitive aging
• Inattentional blindness
• Natural scenes
• Visual search
• Working memory

We thank Digital Artefacts, LLC and Joan Severson for their assistance in developing the experimental software and Art Kramer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for the stimulus images. This work was supported by National Institute on Aging grants NIA AG 17077 and NIA AG 15071.