Change blindness: Theory and consequences

Daniel J. Simons, Michael S. Ambinder

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

People often fail to notice large changes to visual scenes, a phenomenon now known as change blindness. The extent of change blindness in visual perception suggests limits on our capacity to encode, retain, and compare visual information from one glance to the next; our awareness of our visual surroundings is far more sparse than most people intuitively believe. These failures of awareness and the erroneous intuitions that often accompany them have both theoretical and practical ramifications. This article briefly summarizes the current state of research on change blindness and suggests future directions that promise to improve our understanding of scene perception and visual memory.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)44-48
Number of pages5
JournalCurrent Directions in Psychological Science
Volume14
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2005

Keywords

  • Attention
  • Awareness
  • Change blindness
  • Change detection
  • Consciousness
  • Memory
  • Perception
  • Visual representation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Psychology(all)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Change blindness: Theory and consequences'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this