Saeed, Cook, Mackie, and Hayward evaluated change blindness in virtual settings. As they report “In the real world, we often fail to notice changes in our environment. In some cases, such as not noticing a car moving into our lane, the results can be catastrophic. . . . Across two studies . . . participants engaged in an online video chat with a confederate, with two levels of visual clutter (none, a lot) and three levels of interaction (none, light conversations about weather/TV, deeper conversations about goals/greatest regrets). We found no modulation of change blindness rates across perceptual clutter. . . . . our work suggests that we may pay attention to people differently in virtual settings compared to in-person . . . and that while clutter does not seem to affect change blindness rates, one’s level of interaction just might.”
Saeeda Saeed, Arianna Cook, Victoria Mackie, and Dana Hayward. “Looks Can Be Deceiving: Investigating Change Blindness in an Online Setting.” Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000323