Silencing the Awareness of Change

Abstract

Determining whether an object is changing is usually a simple matter of looking at it. But sometimes looking is not enough. For example, in the case of change blindness, drastic changes to a viewed scene become undetectable either because of a distracting flash that competes for attention or because the changes are slow and gradual. In silencing, a form of change blindness caused by the presence of motion, rapid and salient changes become hard to notice even without distraction This chapter describes the illusion of silencing. The strength of silencing depends on the speed of the motion, the structure of the objects, and whether the viewers move their eyes. The related concepts of awareness, consciousness, color perception, change blindness, attention, and motion processing are covered. The brief glimpse hypothesis and its limitations are also explored.