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Talking on a cell phone can impair driving performance, but the dynamics of this effect are not fully understood. We examined the effects of leaving a voicemail message on driving when there are critical driving targets to attend to (crosswalks and pedestrians). Participants engaged in an ecologically-valid “voicemail” task while navigating a virtual environment using a driving simulator. We also examined the potential weakening or strengthening of effects of leaving a voicemail message on driving as the familiarity and predictability of critical targets changed. Participants completed four experimental runs through the same driving environment in a driving simulator. There were two crosswalks, one with a pedestrian entering the roadway and one without a pedestrian and the location of the pedestrian was predictable (the same pedestrian consistently used the same crosswalk) for the first three runs and then unpredictable for the fourth. Half of the participants left voicemail messages using a hands-free headset, while the other half drove in silence. Leaving a voicemail message increased steering deviation and velocity. Drivers who were leaving a voicemail message decelerated for pedestrians in the roadway to a similar speed as drivers who were not leaving a voicemail message, but they were delayed in braking. Drivers who were leaving a voicemail message also had worse memory for roadway landmarks. These effects were relatively stable across runs through the same driving environment, suggesting that familiarity and predictability did not impact the effects of leaving a voicemail message while driving. Therefore, leaving a voicemail message leads to poorer driving behavior; faster speed, variable steering, and worse memory for roadway landmarks. Interestingly, although drivers who were leaving a voicemail message were slower to react to local targets, they slowed as much as drivers who were not leaving a voicemail message and familiarity with the driving environment did not impact the effects of leaving a voicemail message on driving.

Valuable stimuli receive attentional priority. However, it is unknown whether the mechanism of the attentional priority is based on relative (e.g., higher) or absolute (e.g., 45 points) values. Therefore, we manipulated the relative and absolute values independently in a modified value-driven attentional capture paradigm. In the training phase, where associative learning occurs between color and reward value, two test target colors were each presented with another different target color (reference target colors) in separate context blocks. Therefore, each test target color had different reference points. In the test phase, the two test target colors were used as singleton distractor colors. In the training phase of Experiment 1, the absolute reward value of the test target colors was the same, but one had a higher value than its reference target color and the other had a lower value. In the test phase, the high relative value color distractor captured attention more, suggesting that the relative value of stimuli influenced selective attention. In Experiment 2 the relative value of the test target colors was the same, but the absolute value was higher for one. The high and low absolute value color distractors captured attention equally in the test phase, indicating little impact of the absolute value on selective attention. These findings suggest that the relative value, rather than absolute value, plays a critical role in the allocation of attention. Accordingly, the present study suggests that prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, Econometrica, 47 (2), 363-391, 1979) can be extended to earlier cognitive stages such as selective attention.

Attention allocation determines the information that is encoded into memory. Can participants learn to optimally allocate attention based on what types of information are most likely to change? The current study examined whether participants could incidentally learn that changes to either high spatial frequency (HSF) or low spatial frequency (LSF) Gabor patches were more probable and to use this incidentally learned probability information to bias attention during encoding. Participants detected changes in orientation in arrays of 6 Gabor patches: 3 HSF and 3 LSF. For half of the participants, an HSF patch changed orientation on 75% of the trials, and for the other half, an LSF patch changed orientation on 75% of the trials. Experiment 1 demonstrated a change probability effect and an attention allocation effect. Specifically, change detection performance was highest for the probable-change type, and participants learned to use a global spread of attention (fixating between Gabor patches) when LSF patches were most likely to change and to use a local allocation of attention (fixating directly on Gabor patches) when HSF patches were most likely to change. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated these effects and demonstrated that an internal monitoring system is sufficient for these effects. That is, the effects do not require explicit feedback or point rewards. This study demonstrates that incidental learning of probability information can affect the allocation of attention during encoding and can therefore affect what information is stored in visual working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record

An interesting set of findings has emerged from the literature regarding schizotypy. Individuals with psychometric schizotypy self-report pathology in certain neuropsychological, affective experiential, expressive and olfactory abilities and subjective quality of life at levels between one and two standard deviations more severe than their non-schizotypal peers; a level often similar to that seen in chronic schizophrenia. Objectively however, individuals with psychometric schizotypy do not show concomitant impairments in these domains. This “subjective-objective” disjunction is remarkable in that samples are largely drawn from college settings; thus likely reflecting the healthiest individuals within the schizophrenia-spectrum. We propose that this disjunction can be conceptualized as a “cognitive bias”, and that it reflects a dysfunction in the systems underlying reasoning and self-evaluation. In this article, we lay out evidence underlying the subjective-objective disjunction and discuss potential methodological and psychological issues that may explain this phenomenon.

While operating a motor vehicle, drivers must pay attention to other moving vehicles and the roadside environment in order to detect and process critical information related to the driving task. Using a driving simulator, this study investigated the effects of an unexpected event on driver performance in environments of more or less clutter and under situations of high attentional load. Attentional load was manipulated by varying the number of neighboring vehicles participants tracked for lane changes. After baseline-driving behavior was established, the unexpected event occurred: a pedestrian ran into the driver’s path. Tracking-accuracy, brake initiation, swerving, and verbal report of the unexpected pedestrian were used to assess driver performance. All participants verbally reported noticing the pedestrian. However, analyses of driving behavior revealed differences in the reactions to the pedestrian: drivers braked faster and had significantly less deviation in their steering heading with a lower attentional load, and participants in low clutter environments had a larger overall change in velocity. This research advances the understanding of how drivers allocate attention between various stimuli and the trade-offs between a driver’s focus on an assigned task and external objects within the roadway environment. Moreover, the results of this research lend insight into how to construct roadway environments that encourage driver attention toward the most immediate and relevant information to reduce both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian interactions.

To improve maintenance of task-relevant information in visual working memory (VWM), previously encoded, but no longer relevant, information can be suppressed or forgotten. However, it is unclear whether a cue directing attention to a subset of stimuli leads to complete forgetting for non-cued stimuli. The current study utilized a novel method of testing to-be forgotten information to determine if the effectiveness of forgetting differs depending on the type of encoded stimuli. Participants performed a directed forgetting change detection task, and importantly, the changed stimulus could be a novel stimulus or a to-be-forgotten stimulus. Stimulus type (colors, objects, or shapes) was manipulated across two experiments. Results suggest that a cue benefits memory for to-be-remembered information, but performance is not equivalent to never encoding to-be-forgotten information. Furthermore, the type of encoded information impacts the extent of forgetting.

Biophilic design is a popular form of sustainable building design because of its potential to contribute to human health and wellbeing. While many design processes are now mediated by computer technologies such as immersive virtual environments (IVEs), the reliability of IVEs to create the same benefits of biophilic designs as in-situ is yet to be determined. To this end, we conducted a comparative study to measure participants’ mood, cognitive performance, and stress level in in-situ and IVE experiment settings. A within-subject experimental design with thirty-five college students was applied to both in-situ and IVE experiments. The positive and negative scale (PANAS), visual working memory performance, and the sympathetic nervous system index and parasympathetic nervous system index were used as measures for mood, cognitive performance, and stress level of a participant, respectively. We found that natural element exposure in IVEs reduced negative mood in the same way as natural element exposure in-situ. However, we did not find the same for positive affect, visual working memory, and stress level tests. Factors such as the experimental procedure, exposure time to nature in both in-situ and IVE settings, and characteristics of participants may contribute to the results. Future research is needed to further investigate the impact of such factors and develop reliable experimental protocols.

Two experiments were conducted to directly test the feature set hypothesis and the relational set hypothesis in an inattentional blindness task. The feature set hypothesis predicts that unexpected objects that match the to-be-attended stimuli will be reported most. The relational set hypothesis predicts that unexpected objects that match the relationship between the to-be-attended and the to-be-ignored stimuli will be reported the most. Experiment 1 manipulated the luminance of the stimuli. Participants were instructed to monitor the gray letter shapes and to ignore either black or white letter shapes. The unexpected objects that exhibited the luminance relation of the to-be-attended to the to-be-ignored stimuli were reported by participants the most. Experiment 2 manipulated the color of the stimuli. Participants were instructed to monitor the yellower orange or the redder orange letter shapes and to ignore the redder orange or yellower letter shapes. The unexpected objects that exhibited the color relation of the to-be-attended to the to-be-ignored stimuli were reported the most. The results do not support the use of a feature set to accomplish the task and instead support the use of a relational set. In addition, the results point to the concurrent use of multiple attentional sets that are both excitatory and inhibitory.

The limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM) can be maximized by combining multiple features into a single representation through grouping principles such as connection, proximity, and similarity. In this study, we sought to understand how VWM organizes information by investigating how connection and similarity cues are used either alone or in the presence of another grouping cue. Furthermore, we examined whether the use of one cue over another is within volitional control. Participants remembered displays of objects that contained no grouping cues, connection cues only, similarity cues only, or both connection and similarity cues. We found that it is possible to use either connection or similarity cues, although connection cues tend to dominate if the cues are in conflict with one another. However, it is possible to flexibly use either similarity or connection cues if both are present, depending on the task goals.

Attentional templates can be represented in visual working memory (VWM) when the target varies from trial-to-trial and can be represented in long-term memory (LTM) when the target is consistent during trial runs. Given that attentional templates can be represented in either VWM or LTM, are there any differences in how these representations impact visual search when targets are consistent compared with varying? The current study tested the consistent template hypothesis, which predicts faster performance with a consistent target compared with a varying target. Experiment 1 examined whether consistent targets could lead to consistent templates that would improve template establishment, guidance, and/or comparison of the template to search items. Search response time was faster for consistent targets, and consistent targets produced faster comparison processes, but not more efficient guidance. Experiment 2 examined the consistent template restoration hypothesis, which predicts faster template establishment and comparison processes for a previously encountered consistent target. Experiment 2 replicated the consistent template hypothesis and supported the consistent template restoration hypothesis. These studies demonstrate that although attentional guidance is similar with varying and consistent attentional templates, consistent templates improve search performance by speeding template establishment and comparison processes. (PsycINFO Database Record

When briefly presented with global and local visual information, individuals report global information more quickly and more accurately than local information, a phenomenon known as the global precedence effect (GPE; Navon, 1977). We investigated whether a bias toward global information persists in visual working memory (VWM) and whether the VWM representations for global and local features include information bound to their hierarchical levels and to each other. Navon figures, in which a larger (global) letter is composed of smaller (local) letters, were presented, and participants performed a change detection task that required participants to remember features only (either a global or local letter changed to a new identity); features bound to their hierarchical levels (the global and local letters within an object swapped levels); or features bound to each other within an object (2 letters from the same level swapped between objects). Performance suggested that there was a GPE in VWM (new global letters were more accurately detected than new local letters) and that although global and local features were not necessarily bound together in VWM, they were bound to their corresponding hierarchical levels. These results indicate that level binding in VWM occurs more readily than binding specific object features together. These findings further our understanding of how hierarchical objects are represented in VWM.

People have the ability to attentively select and successfully track several moving objects, a process known as multiple-object tracking (MOT; Pylyshyn & Storm Spatial Vision 3: 179-197, 1988). Various factors have been known to influence MOT performance, such as speed, number of distractors, and proximity, while recent work has suggested that object trajectories may also be a factor (Fencsik, Kleiger, & Horowitz Perception and Psychophysics 69: 567-577, 2007). Meanwhile, unexpected changes in motion information have been demonstrated to be a critical facet for attracting attention Howard & Holcombe Attention, Perception & Psychophysics 72: 2087-2095, (2010). Therefore, we suggest that unexpected changes in target trajectories are an important factor in tracking performance. The research presented here controlled for spatial proximity while manipulating the number of instances in which an object changed trajectory. We found that spatial proximity had no effect on tracking performance but, rather, as the number of trajectory changes increased, tracking performance suffered. Results imply that the ability to track multiple moving objects is limited by unexpected changes in direction.

Objective: Our aim was to examine the specificity of the effects of acquiring expertise on visual working memory (VWM) and the degree to which higher levels of experience within the domain of expertise are associated with more efficient use of VWM. Background: Previous research is inconsistent on whether expertise effects are specific to the area of expertise or generalize to other tasks that also involve the same cognitive processes. It is also unclear whether more training and/or experience will lead to continued improvement on domain-relevant tasks or whether a plateau could be reached. Method: In Experiment 1, veterinary medicine students completed a one-shot visual change detection task. In Experiment 2, veterinarians completed a flicker change detection task. Both experiments involved stimuli specific to the domain of radiology and general stimuli. Results: In Experiment 1, veterinary medicine students who had completed an “eyes-on” radiological training demonstrated a domain-specific effect in which performance was better on the domain-specific stimuli than on the domain-general stimuli. In Experiment 2, veterinarians again showed a domain-specific effect, but performance was unrelated to the amount of experience veterinarians had accumulated. Conclusion: The effect of experience is domain specific and occurs during the first few years of training, after which a plateau is reached. Application: VWM training in one domain may not lead to improved performance on other VWM tasks. In acquiring expertise, eyes-on training is important initially, but continued experience may not be associated with further improvements in the efficiency of VWM.

Clutter can slow visual search. However, experts may develop attention strategies that alleviate the effects of clutter on search performance. In the current study we examined the effects of global and local clutter on visual search performance and attention strategies. Pilots and undergraduates searched for an elevation marker in charts of high, medium, and low global clutter. The target was in a low or high local clutter region of the chart or it was absent. High global and local clutter slowed search performance for both pilots and undergraduates. Pilots were more accurate but slower. Pilots’ search strategies differed from undergraduates in the following ways: they had more conservative criteria for responding target absent and spent more time processing the information within each fixation. Pilots and undergraduates used a coarse-to-fine search strategy in which, as the trial progressed, fixation durations increased and saccade distance decreased.

The current study tested two hypotheses of feature binding memory: The attention hypothesis, which suggests that attention is needed to maintain feature bindings in visual working memory (VWM) and the volatile representation hypothesis, which suggests that feature bindings in memory are volatile and easily overwritten, but do not require sustained attention. Experiment 1 tested the attention hypothesis by measuring shifts of overt attention during the study array of a change detection task; serial shifts of attention did not disrupt feature bindings. Experiments 2 and 3 encouraged encoding of more volatile (Experiment 2) or durable (Experiment 3) representations during the study array. Binding change detection performance was impaired in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 3, suggesting that binding performance is impaired when encoding supports a less durable memory representation. Together, these results suggest that although feature bindings may be volatile and easily overwritten, attention is not requ...

The present studies examined the roles of identity and spatial working memory in change detection. Observers completed a spatial or identity working m emory task concurrently with a change detection task. In the change detection task, participants we re presented naturalistic scenes that contained eit her a color or location change to one object. Concurren tly, participants remembered either the colors or locations of four squares. There was specific disru ption of performance when the working memory task and the change detection task loaded the same subsystem of working memory. There was also evidence that spatial information is processed more readily than identity information. This suggests that although there are separate systems for identi ty and spatial working memory, these subsystems are not necessarily created equal in that processing in the spatial processing may have priority over identity processing. However, this priority can be overridden during change detection if spatial memory is already occupied.

Statistical properties in the visual environment can be used to improve performance on visual working memory (VWM) tasks. The current study examined the ability to incidentally learn that a change is more likely to occur to a particular feature dimension (shape, color, or location) and use this information to improve change detection performance for that dimension (the change probability effect). Participants completed a change detection task in which one change type was more probable than others. Change probability effects were found for color and shape changes, but not location changes, and intentional strategies did not improve the effect. Furthermore, the change probability effect developed and adapted to new probability information quickly. Finally, in some conditions, an improvement in change detection performance for a probable change led to an impairment in change detection for improbable changes.

Affective disturbances in social domains are characteristic features and potential vulnerability markers of schizophrenia-spectrum pathology. The present study employed a comprehensive and multidimensional approach to understanding affect in individuals with psychometrically defined schizotypy and the controls. Measures were employed assessing trait and state social affective experiences across direct — involving explicit deliberative responses, and indirect domains — involving implicit, behavioral or otherwise non-deliberative responses. The indirect assessments included a modified Implicit Association Test and computerized lexical analysis of natural speech procured during a laboratory speech task. Our affect measures were also unique in that they allowed for separate measurement of pleasant and unpleasant affect. On all direct trait and “in-the-moment” state measures of social affect, individuals with schizotypy reported dramatically decreased pleasant and increased unpleasant affect compared to controls. This was not the case for the indirect measures, which indicated no significant group differences. This pattern was generally consistent regardless of positive, negative and disorganized schizotypal trait severity. These data suggest that affective deficits in schizotypy reflect deliberative rather than implicit/automatic processes. Implications of these findings are discussed.

In the typical visual search experiment, participants search for targets that are present on half of the trials and absent on the other half. However, many real-world tasks involve targets that are present only occasionally. Given this, it is important to know how people deal with the problem of finding targets they have little experience with. One possibility is that they develop an awareness of the degree to which they have effectively completed a search through complex target-absent scenes. To test this hypothesis, we had participants complete two relatively long search tasks in which only a minority of trials included targets. Stimuli were cluttered real-world scenes, and targets were defined by category. We examined participants' ability to terminate search on the target-absent scenes based on an accurate assessment of scene difficulty. Scene difficulty was estimated by computing the mean correct-trial response time (RT) for each of the target-absent scenes across all participants. These group RTs were then correlated with each participants' individual correct-trial RTs for the same stimuli to assess the degree to which a given participant's search-termination times were correlated with those of the group. These correlations successfully predicted participants' target-detection success in both experiments. These experiments suggest that an integral part of visual search is the need to calibrate search behaviour to scenes of varying levels of complexity even when no targets are present.

Eye tracking results from a recent visual search experiment suggest 1) people avoid searching in highly cluttered regions of displays, and 2) people tend to start searching in regions with lower clutter and progress to regions with higher clutter as needed. Subjects searched for a symbol randomly placed in displays containing varying amounts of clutter, measured with the C3 clutter metric (Lohrenz et al., 2009). Displays were categorized as having low, medium, or high “global” clutter (average clutter for the display). Displays were gridded into 100 cells, and a “local” C3 value was calculated for each cell. An eye-tracker monitored search behavior. On average, with low and medium global-clutter displays, subjects searched in areas with local clutter similar to the displays' global clutter; with high global-clutter displays, subjects searched in areas with significantly lower local clutter (relative to global clutter). The average clutter of cells in which subjects searched plateaued at C3=6.4 (on a scale from 0 to 12), suggesting a measurable limit to the amount of clutter through which subjects are able (or willing) to search.

Previous research demonstrates that implicitly learned probability information can guide visual attention. We examined whether the probability of an object changing can be implicitly learned and then used to improve change detection performance. In a series of six experiments, participants completed 120–130 training change detection trials. In four of the experiments the object that changed color was the same shape (trained shape) on every trial. Participants were not explicitly aware of this change probability manipulation and change detection performance was not improved for the trained shape versus untrained shapes. In two of the experiments, the object that changed color was always in the same general location (trained location). Although participants were not explicitly aware of the change probability, implicit knowledge of it did improve change detection performance in the trained location. These results indicate that improved change detection performance through implicitly learned change probability occurs for location but not shape.

In the experiment reported here, we examined the processes by which expected (probable) changes are detected more frequently than are unexpected (improbable) changes (the change probability effect; Beck, Angelone, & Levin, 2004). The change probability effect may be caused by a bias toward probable changes during encoding of the prechange aspect, during retrieval of the prechange aspect, or during activation of an explicit response to the change. Participants performed a change detection task for probable and improbable changes while their eye movements were tracked. Change detection performance was superior for probable changes, but long-term memory performance was equivalent for both probable and improbable changes. Therefore, although both probable and improbable prechange aspects were encoded, probable prechange aspects were more likely to be retrieved during change detection. Implicit change detection was also greater for probable changes than for improbable changes, suggesting that the change probability effect is the result of a bias during the retrieval and comparison stage of change detection. The stimuli used in the change detection task may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Smilek, Eastwood, Reynolds, and Kingstone (2007) suggests that the studies reported in Beck, M. R., Levin, D. T. and Angelone, B. A. (2007) (Change blindness blindness: Beliefs about the roles of intention and scene complexity in change detection. Consciousness and Cognition) are not ecologically valid. Here, we argue that not only are change blindness and change blindness blindness studies in general ecologically valid, but that the studies we reported in Beck, Levin, and Angelone, 2007 are as well. Specifically, we suggest that many of the changes used in our study could reasonably be expected to occur in the real world. Furthermore, the conclusion from Beck et al. (2007) that knowledge about the role of intention and scene complexity in change detection is not readily accessible applies not only to the laboratory studies we conducted but also to real world situations.

The amount of dynamic information in the world greatly exceeds the capacity to attend to and represent this information. However, due to efficient voluntary and/or involuntary allocation of resources, many tasks can be performed despite these cognitive limits. For example, when driving a car, the position of many other cars around the driver, the colour of the traffic lights, and the possible presence of pedestrians on the side of the road must be monitored, which requires the recruitment of visual working memory (VWM), a short-term store of visual information limited in capacity to about three to four units of information (Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2004; Luck & Vogel, 1997). Although there is far more visual information available than can be represented in VWM at any given time, some parts of the visual world are very likely to change (e.g., a traffic light is likely to change from red to green) whereas other parts are less likely to change (e.g., a stop sign is unlikely to change colour). Therefore, selectively attending to and storing objects or features that are likely to change is an efficient strategy to improve the ability to detect changes in the visual environment. This selection can be guided by explicit task instructions, or by probability information that has been learned incidentally (Beck, Angelone, & Levin, 2004; Beck, Angelone, Levin, Peterson, & Varakin, 2008; Droll, Gigone, & Hayhoe, 2007; van Lamsweerde & Beck, 2011). We examined how the ability to incidentally learn and use probability information to efficiently allocate VWM resources is affected by whether this information is likely to be initially maintained in VWM.Grouping in Visual Working MemoryAlthough capacity in VWM is very limited, capacity can be maximized by combining multiple pieces of information into a single unit. For example, a red ball is composed of several spatially connected features from different dimensions: colour, shape, size, texture, and so forth. One way of maximizing VWM capacity is to represent all of these connected features together in a single representation (e.g., a "red ball": Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2004; Luck & Vogel, 1997; Luria & Vogel, 2011; Vogel, Woodman, & Luck, 2001).However, while the spatial connection of features is a useful perceptual cue for grouping together two features (Xu, 2006), gestalt grouping principles such as proximity (Woodman, Vecera, & Luck, 2003), similarity (Peterson & Berryhill, 2013), or closure (Anderson, Vogel, & Awh, 2013) may also be used to group together multiple features in VWM. For example, in a change detection task-in which participants determine whether a change occurs between a memory display of items followed by a test display-performance is higher when the memory display contains multiple squares of the same colour (similarity-grouping cue) than when all of the colours are unique. This suggests that identical colours are grouped together into a single unit in VWM (Peterson & Berryhill, 2013). Furthermore, Anderson et al. (2013) found that contralateral delay activity (an ERP marker of the number of items in VWM: Vogel & Machizawa, 2004) decreased when closure cues were present. These data suggest that features can be grouped together in VWM via gestalt grouping cues.What about when two conflicting grouping cues are available? For example, a display with a red oval and a red triangle could potentially be maintained in two ways: as a "red oval" and a "red triangle" (using the spatial connection cue) or a grouping of "red" information (using the feature similarity cue), resulting in separate or no representation for the shape information. If both the colour and shape are task-relevant, then the spatial connection cue would be the most efficient use of VWM capacity, because all of the features can be remembered in two "coloured shape" VWM representations (assuming a capacity of at least two units; Luck & Vogel, 1997). …

Although memory for the identities of examined items is not used to guide visual search, identity memory may be acquired during visual search. In all experiments reported here, search was occasionally terminated and a memory test was presented for the identity of a previously examined item. Participants demonstrated memory for the locations of the examined items by avoiding revisits to these items and memory performance for the items’ identities was above chance but lower than expected based on performance in intentional memory tests. Memory performance improved when the foil was not from the search set, suggesting that explicit identity memory is not bound to memory for location. Providing context information during test improved memory for the most recently examined item. Memory for the identities of previously examined items was best when the most recently examined item was tested, contextual information was provided, and location memory was not required.

Theories relating attention to change blindness (CB) imply that representations of objects in the focus of attention are stable and coherent. However, CB occurs for objects in the focus of attention. Here, we explore this apparent contradiction and the possibility that changes can be detected without having a complete and stable representation of the prechange object. The first experiment required observers to recognize a prechange object and a postchange object after viewing arrays of various sizes in which the prechange object was replaced by the postchange object after a brief delay. Results indicated that the representation of the prechange object was strong enough to cue a change but not strong enough to support accurate recognition. The remaining experiments demonstrated that the representation of the prechange object is volatile in that a shift in the display or the presence of a postchange object can disrupt the representation. These findings add to current theories of attention and representations by showing that attention may result in volatile representations that can support change detection without supporting accurate recognition.

Recently, a number of experiments have emphasized the degree to which subjects fail to detect large changes in visual scenes. This finding, referred to as “change blindness,” is often considered surprising because many people have the intuition that such changes should be easy to detect. Levin, Momen, Drivdahl, and Simons (2000) documented this intuition by showing that the majority of subjects believe they would notice changes that are actually very rarely detected. Thus subjects exhibit a metacognitive error we refer to as “change blindness blindness.” Here, we test whether CBB is caused by a misestimation of the perceptual experience associated with visual changes and show that it persists even when the pre- and postchange views are separated by long delays. In addition, subjects overestimate their change detection ability both when the relevant changes are illustrated by still pictures, and when they are illustrated using videos showing the changes occurring in real time. We conclude that CBB is a robust phenomenon that cannot be accounted for by failure to understand the specific perceptual experience associated with a change.

The ability to remember feature bindings is an important measure of the ability to maintain objects in working memory (WM). In this study, we investigated whether both object- and feature-based representations are maintained in WM. Specifically, we tested the hypotheses that retaining a greater number of feature representations (i.e., both as individual features and bound representations) results in a more robust representation of individual features than of feature bindings, and that retrieving information from long-term memory (LTM) into WM would cause a greater disruption to feature bindings. In four experiments, we examined the effects of retrieving a word from LTM on shape and color-shape binding change detection performance. We found that binding changes were more difficult to detect than individual-feature changes overall, but that the cost of retrieving a word from LTM was the same for both individual-feature and binding changes.