What is considered to be "Change Blindness?" Take a minute and glance over the top picture to your left. Now, take a look at the picture below it. Were you able to speculate the six different in the second picture? If you were unsuccessful, then you have just experienced change blindness. Many people often have trouble detecting the change in details of a picture, unless it is prominent where to look.
The six alterations between the top and bottom pictures are as follows:
- Number of Clouds
- Number of Whiskers
- Expression of Worm's Mouth
- Red Flower (detail)
- Leaf at the top of the tree
- Bird's Foot
Change Blindness is not just limited to pictures, this phenomenon can also occur in movies, sitcoms, or commercials. Have you ever watched a movie and noticed that some aspect of a scene, which should remain the same, changes from one shot to the next? This is known as a continuity error; and these errors are spotted by viewers who are "hunting them down" in the film. However, these critics had to watch the film several times to speculate the difference; most people would not notice the difference if they were not looking for them. In films, many people bestow their attention onto motion, which provides a cue that indicates a change is going to occur. However, the appearance or disappearance of an object/detail is when we miss detecting those changes.
In conclusion, we can perceive some things that are apparent, such as gender, or ethnic background, without focused attention; however, that focused attention is necessary and mandatory for detecting many of the details within a scene and the specific objects accompanying that scene!
The video below exhibits change blindness (continuity error) in a short video. See if you can find the change. Good Luck!
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