The effects of visual cues on Change Blindness

change blindness is a relatively new field of study in psychology, referring to the propensity of individuals to ignore changes in the environment if they are not being actively attended to during one's interaction. In this study, the question of how cues in the form of descriptive words would effect participant's ability to detect changes in a short film was explored. Participants were shown a list of random words and cue words before a film in which changes occurred in each shot of the film. After the film, participants were asked to recall the words they had been asked to remember before the film. Those who were able to recall cue words shown before the film were better able to detect changes during the film than students who were unable to recall cue words.