Abstract
To study the role of the location of change in change blindness we investigated performance differences in a detection task in which the location of change could be varied within a single trial. In a random pattern of 15 red and 15 green small disks, colour changes (red to green or green to red) occurred repetitively at the same location (alternation condition) or at different locations on each frame. In the latter case, either the colour of a randomly chosen disk (random condition), or of the disk closest to the location of the last change (snake condition) was changed on each consecutive frame. In all conditions, the within-trial ratio of red to green disks was kept the same. The participants had to respond when a change was seen and, subsequently, indicate where the change occurred. The results show that change detection was fastest in the alternation condition, intermediate in the random condition, and, remarkably, slowest in the snake condition. We discuss these findings in terms of different underlying mechanisms in change detection.
