Change Blindness: The Effects of Cohesive Relatedness
and Pictorial Vs. Textual Presentation on Recall
By: Sophorn Chip, Tulani Gonzalez,
Janice Harmon, Jessica Rodrigues
The purpose of this study was to examine detection of
change in stimuli (picture or text) and the effect of
cohesive relatedness (related or unrelated) on memory
recall. A 2x2 mixed groups design was used to measure
the percentage of changes (overall and correct) recalled.
Forty female college students were randomly assigned to
picture or text conditions, which had an equal number of
both related and unrelated objects or words. There were
two main effects and no interaction between the
variables. Participants detected more changes in picture
and more correct changes in the related condition.
Cohesive relatedness had a significant effect on the
detection of change; unrelated pictures or text were
more likely to be detected and correctly recalled.
Hypotheses:
Main Effect 1: Change is more easily detected in text than in
pictures.
Main Effect 2: Change is more easily detected in
unrelated stimuli than related stimuli.
Interaction: Change is more easily detected in unrelated
text than related text and related/unrelated pictures.
Introduction
 Change Blindness: the perception of a coherent
and steady environment that seems to contain all
of the detail present in the environment, despite
constant change (Shore, 2000).
 Cohesive Relatedness: the established
relationship between two or more groups of
objects.
 Past Research:
o Shore and Klein (2000): studied detection
of change as the result of pictures as
stimuli. Findings: 9.6% of Ss failed to
detect central or marginal color, location,
and presence/absence changes.
o Hollingworth (2001): studied detection of
change in semantically consistent or
inconsistent pictorial stimuli. Semantically
consistent was defined as unrelated
objects in a scene. Findings: Ss were more
likely to detect change with semantically
inconsistent objects than semantically
consistent objects.
Subjects:
 40 voluntary, Mount Holyoke College Students
Materials:
 8 pictures (4 original, 4 modified)
 8 paragraphs (4 original, 4 modified)
 Crossword Puzzle
 Recall Sheet
Procedure:
To measure the detection of change in pictorial and
textual stimuli, each subject was presented with either
four pairs of pictorial stimuli (four original pictures and
their modified versions), or four pairs of textual stimuli
(four original paragraphs and their modified versions). A
researcher provided the first stimulus and the subject
was allowed to study it for a period of 60 seconds. The
researcher then removed the stimulus and the subject
was asked to work on a simple crossword puzzle for 60
seconds. The crossword puzzle was used to prevent
rehearsal of the original stimulus before the modified
stimulus was shown. After the 60 seconds the researcher
then provided them with the modified version of the
stimulus for another 60 seconds. After the 60 seconds,
the researcher removed the stimulus and the subject was
instructed to flip to their recall sheet and fill out section
A. The sheet informed the subjects to record any
changes they may have noticed. Subjects were allotted 1
minute to complete this part of the recall sheet. This
process was repeated until the subject had been exposed
to all levels of the stimuli (related and unrelated) within
their specified condition (pictures or text). After the
final section of the recall sheet had been filled out,
subjects were thanked for their participation and
debriefed.
RESULTS
A 2 (picture or text) X 2 (related or unrelated)
between/within mixed groups ANOVA was used to
determine whether type of stimuli and degree of
cohesive relatedness would have a significant effect on
the number of changes detected. The percentage of any
detected changes and the percentage of correctly
detected changes were the dependent variables.
 There was a significant main effect for type of
stimuli, where participants detected more changes
in the picture condition (M=74.25) than the text
condition (M=58.25), F(1,38)=10.16, MSE=504.08,
p<.05.
 There was a significant main effect for degree of
cohesive relatedness, when correct detection of
change was the dependent variable. Participants
detected more changes in the unrelated condition
(M=42.25) than in the related condition
(M=33.00), F(1,38)=4.40, MSE=388.88, p<.05.
 Furthermore, there was not a significant interaction
between type of stimuli and cohesive relatedness, when
detection of any change was the dependent variable,
F(1,38)=.03, MSE=153.03, p>.05.
In our study, our results did not support our
hypotheses. Our first hypothesis, that change would be
more easily detected in textual presentation than in
pictorial presentation, was not supported. Instead, we
found that change was more easily detected in pictorial
presentation than in textual presentation. Contrary to
our previous research in our pilot study, we found that
change was more easily detected textually than
pictorially. This discrepancy may be due to subjects
reading four sets of text, as opposed to one set of text
in our pilot study. This increase in the number of texts
with 5 color changes created a maturation effect,
possibly causing fatigue in participants and reducing
memory recall. Our results are supported by Shore’s
(2000) research, which found that changes in color were
easily detected in pictorially stimuli.
Our second hypothesis that change would be more
easily detected in unrelated items, than in related items
was not supported. It is important to note that we
divided our results into overall changes detected by
subjects, and correctly detected changes by the
subjects. We found no significant difference between
the number of overall changes detected for our cohesive
relatedness independent variable. However, we did find a
significant difference between the number of correctly
detected changes.
Our results are supported by
Hollingworth’s, et al. (2000) research, which found that
change was more easily detected with unrelated items in
a scene than with related items in a scene.
Some suggestions for future improvement might be
a change in the time allotted per stimulus, different
degrees of the complexity of the stimulus, and different
types of changes.
References
Hollingworth, A., Williams, C. C., and Henderson, J. M. (2001). To
see and remember: Visually specific information is retained
in memory from previously attended objects in natural
scenes. Psychonomic Bulletin & Reviews, 8(4), 761-768.
Shore, D. I., and Klein, R. M. (2001). The effects of scene
inversion on change blindness. The Journal of General
Psychology, 127(1), 27-43.