This project investigates the visual representations of objects and scenes people construct as they view the world. Although conscious experience suggests that we form a detailed representation of what we are looking at, recent findings that observers often fail to detect large changes to scenes from one view to the next (change blindness) have been interpreted as evidence we don't represent our visual surroundings in much detail. This project examines an alternative hypothesis: Although observers cannot consciously detect changes to the visual details of complex scenes, these details are nevertheless represented. The experiments test this hypothesis by examining the nature of visual representations when change detection fails. Two procedural innovations are used in the studies. First, stimuli will be motion pictures rather than static scenes, to allow assessment of scene representation in a context closer to the real-world experiences of observers. Second, eye movements will be monitored during change detection. Eye movements should provide a more sensitive measure of scene representation, and will allow the role of attention in formation of scene representations to be examined. These methods will be used to investigate whether failures of change detection imply the lack of a representation or simply the inaccessibility of a representation to awareness. The results should add to our understanding of how the visual environment is represented from one view to the next, and how the representations contribute to our perception and awareness of a stable visual world.
