Change blindness in higher-order thought: Misrepresentation or good enough? (original) (raw)
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Change Blindness and Misrepresentation
Some proponents of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness defend the view that higher-order misrepresentation is possible. In support of this view they have proposed various pieces of empirical evidence. This paper examines one such piece of proposed empirical evidence; Change blindness (CB). CB occurs when a subject fails to detect salient changes in visual scenes. I propose an alternative interpretation of the CB phenomenon on which misrepresentation does not occur. Finally, I examine three lines of reply that might be pursued to defend the claim that CB is evidence of misrepresentation against my interpretation. I conclude that none of the lines of reply succeed in preserving CB as evidence of misrepresentation. The upshot is that, pending further evidence, CB cannot be deployed as empirical evidence in the debate on misrepresentation.
Intentionalism and Change Blindness
Philosophia, 2008
According to reductive intentionalism, the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is constituted by the experience's intentional (or representational) content. In this article I attempt to show that a phenomenon in visual perception called change blindness poses a problem for this doctrine. Specifically, I argue that phenomenal character is not sensitive, as it should be if reductive intentionalism is correct, to fine-grained variations in content. The standard anti-intentionalist strategy is to adduce putative cases in which phenomenal character varies despite sameness of content. This paper explores an alternative antiintentionalist tack, arguing, by way of a specific example involving change blindness, that content can vary despite sameness of phenomenal character.
1998
In order to become aware of inconsistencies, one must first construe of the world in a way that reflects its consistencies. This paper begins with a tentative model for how a set of discrete memories transforms into an interconnected worldview, wherein relationships between memories are forged by way of abstractions. Inconsistencies prompt the invention of new abstractions. In regions of the conceptual network where inconsistencies abound, a cognitive analog of simulated annealing is in order; there is a willingness to question previous assumptions - to ‘loosen’ conceptual relationships - so as to let new concepts percolate through the worldview and exert the needed revolutionary effect. In so doing there is a risk of assimilating dangerous concepts. Repression arrests the process by which dangerous thoughts infiltrate the conceptual network, and deception blocks thoughts that have already been assimilated. These forms of self-initiated worldview inconsistency may evoke feelings of fragmentation at the level of the individual or the society.
On the applications of change blindness
Psychologia, 2008
An overview is presented of the ways that change blindness has been applied to the study of various issues in perception and cognition. Topics include mechanisms of change perception, allocation of attention, nonconscious perception, and cognitive beliefs. Recent work using change blindness to investigate these topics is surveyed, along with a brief discussion of some of the ways that these approaches may further develop over the next few years.
From change blindness to choice blindness
Psychologia, 2008
The phenomenon of change blindness has received a great deal of attention during the last decade, but very few experiments have examined the effects of the subjective importance of the visual stimuli under study. We have addressed this question in a series of studies by introducing choice as a critical variable in change detection (see . In the present study, participants were asked to choose which of two pictures they found more attractive. For stimuli we used both pairs of abstract patterns and female faces. Sometimes the pictures were switched during to choice procedure, leading to a reversal of the initial choice of the participants. Surprisingly, the subjects seldom noticed the switch, and in a post-test memory task, they also often remembered the manipulated choice as being their own. In combination with our previous findings, this result indicates that we often fail to notice changes in the world even if they have later consequences for our own actions.
Change blindness theory and consequences
Current Directions in Psychological …, 2005
People often fail to notice large changes to visual scenes, a phenomenon now known as change blindness. The extent of change blindness in visual perception suggests limits on our capacity to encode, retain, and compare visual information from one glance to the next; our awareness of our visual surroundings is far more sparse than most people intuitively believe. These failures of awareness and the erroneous intuitions that often accompany them have both theoretical and practical ramifications. This article briefly summarizes the current state of research on change blindness and suggests future directions that promise to improve our understanding of scene perception and visual memory.
Change blindness: past, present, and future
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2005
Change blindness is the striking failure to see large changes that normally would be noticed easily. Over the past decade this phenomenon has greatly contributed to our understanding of attention, perception, and even consciousness. The surprising extent of change blindness explains its broad appeal, but its counterintuitive nature has also engendered confusions about the kinds of inferences that legitimately follow from it. Here we discuss the legitimate and the erroneous inferences that have been drawn, and offer a set of requirements to help separate them. In doing so, we clarify the genuine contributions of change blindness research to our understanding of visual perception and awareness, and provide a glimpse of some ways in which change blindness might shape future research.