Yeditepe University, Cognitive Science Master's Program is happy to announce its next lecture: The Role of Expectation in Change Blindness
Meltem Coşkunçay
Wednesday March 6th, 16:30
A-442 Engineering Building
Human may believe that they notice every important change in their environment. However, the phenomenon of change blindness – a failure to notice salient changes to our visual world – tells a different story. The present research investigated the role of expectation in change blindness by using a modified version of the flicker paradigm. The sample consisted of 120 university students (60 females and 60 males) aged between 18-26. The study used two stimuli - ball and clock - which had an original and a changed version. The changes in the images were either in the expected direction with the minute hand of the clock moving clockwise and the ball sliding down or in the unexpected direction. All participants were presented with both stimuli, either in the expected change or unexpected change condition, resulting in four different display types. The order of display types was counterbalanced across participants. Response times for the detection of change were collected. It was hypothesized that response time (RT) for expected changes would be lower than RT for unexpected changes. After the experiment, participants completed a post-experimental questionnaire to confirm that they actually noticed the changes, and that they did not press the button without noticing. The questionnaire also asked participants to state in which direction they had expected the stimuli to move before they saw the changed image. All participants stated the change in the stimulus, and the expected direction for the change correctly. The overall results of the experiment with the two stimuli combined showed that participants were able to detect expected changes faster than unexpected ones, supporting our hypothesis. When the two stimuli were investigated separately, participants were able to detect expected changes faster than unexpected changes for the ball, while the difference between the two conditions was non-significant for the clock. Considering the individual difference in RT, a median split was applied to investigate how the two subgroups behaved. In the upper RT group, participants were able to detect the expected changes faster than the unexpected changes, while in the lower RT group, the difference between the response times of unexpected and expected changes was not significant. The findings are discussed within the framework of expectation-based theories.
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Painting: bit.ly/2tKlpCs
