Visual Search for Change: A Probe into the Nature of Attentional Processing

By Ronald A. Rensink. 2000

278 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A set of visual search experiments tested the proposal that focused attention is needed to detect change. Displays were arrays of rectangles, with the target being the item that continually changed its orientation or contrast polarity. Five aspects of performance were examined: linearity of response, processing time, capacity, selectivity, and memory trace. Detection of change was found to be a self-terminating process requiring a time that increased linearly with the number of items in the display. Capacity for orientation was found to be about five items, a value comparable to estimates of attentional capacity. Observers were able to filter out both static and dynamic variations in irrelevant properties. Analysis also indicated a memory for previously attended locations. These results support the hypothesis that the process needed to detect change is much the same as the attentional process needed to detect complex static patterns. Interestingly, the features of orientation and polarity were found to be handled in somewhat different ways. Taken together, these results not only provide evidence that focused attention is needed to see change, but also show that change detection itself can provide new insights into the nature of attentional processing.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f0138ec17f712446267f9380f59f760a944ceeff

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Parental role models and the decision to become self-employed: The moderating effect of personality (2012, background): “For example, we assume that children pay attention to their parents’ behaviors and experiences, particularly since attention toward environmental stimuli (such as role models) is a prerequisite to reaction to these stimuli ( Rensink 2000 ).”
Thinking and seeing : visual metacognition in adults and children (2004, background): “The illusion of feature-based visual continuity has been discussed frequently (Dennett, 1991; O’Regan, 1992; Blackmore et al., 1995; Rensink, 2000; Noë, Pessoa, and Thompson, 2000; Levin and Simons, 2000; Noë, 2002), is only now being approached empirically.”
Why don't we see changes? The role of attentional bottlenecks and limited visual memory (2006, background): “Alternatively, it might be that the square mask acted as a new object, knocking the old item out of VSTM if it happened to be in VSTM (a form of object substitution masking; DiLollo, Enns, & Rensink, 2000).”