Change blindness and congruency:
an experiment using flicker paradigm to investigate the
effect of the type of congruency on change detection
ABSTRACT
1
, Change blindness with three types of congruency was studied for 250 participants (Mean age =
34.34, 69.2% male, 30.8% female). The purpose was to find whether the type of congruency of
the object changing in an environment affects our ability to detect the change. The task was to
detect if a change had occurred on the picture pairs presented. Rensink’s flicker paradigm was
used, and three categories of changes were presented where a congruent object was replaced with
congruent, incongruent or within-category object. Participants’ response time was recorded by a
mouse click when a change was found on the picture. Results revealed significant difference
between congruent (Mean = 2.88) and incongruent (Mean = 4.02) or within - category (Mean =
3.88) changes, however, unexpected results were found differences in mean time of change
detection between congruent and incongruent objects. The results may indicate that change
blindness varies according to the type of change presented to a scene.
INTRODUCTION
The phenomenon of change blindness is the inability of detecting change and occurs when the visual
capacity is finite (Rensink et al., 1997). In terms of change blindness, when someone does not pay
attention to something consciously, they do not notice the changes even though it happens in front of their
2
an experiment using flicker paradigm to investigate the
effect of the type of congruency on change detection
ABSTRACT
1
, Change blindness with three types of congruency was studied for 250 participants (Mean age =
34.34, 69.2% male, 30.8% female). The purpose was to find whether the type of congruency of
the object changing in an environment affects our ability to detect the change. The task was to
detect if a change had occurred on the picture pairs presented. Rensink’s flicker paradigm was
used, and three categories of changes were presented where a congruent object was replaced with
congruent, incongruent or within-category object. Participants’ response time was recorded by a
mouse click when a change was found on the picture. Results revealed significant difference
between congruent (Mean = 2.88) and incongruent (Mean = 4.02) or within - category (Mean =
3.88) changes, however, unexpected results were found differences in mean time of change
detection between congruent and incongruent objects. The results may indicate that change
blindness varies according to the type of change presented to a scene.
INTRODUCTION
The phenomenon of change blindness is the inability of detecting change and occurs when the visual
capacity is finite (Rensink et al., 1997). In terms of change blindness, when someone does not pay
attention to something consciously, they do not notice the changes even though it happens in front of their
2
