Phenomenon of Change Blindness essay

Phenomenon of Change Blindness essay Definition of change blindness: why we fail to notice? Psychologists use this term to describe the phenomenon when a person suddenly misses any kind of changes in their direct visual environment. Of course, you might not believe it â€" because its obvious to you that you will notice any changes that happened before your eyes. But in reality, our brain sometimes needs much more time than we think to realize what happened around. Sometimes even quite big changes can happen in peoples visual field, but they cannot see them. Lets see why it happens and how it can be explained from the psychological view. When our attention is concentrated on some other thing apart from visual, its not so hard for people to miss either minor and major changes that happened right in from of their visual field. The most simple way to see the phenomenon of change blindness is to look at experiments that were taken to research it. For example, in 1998 two famous scientists Levin and Simons made researches when people had to start a conversation with a stranger. Then during a short interruption between them (a car or a crowd of people) the first stranger was replaced with another stranger, but people didnt notice this change. Most of the people didnt understand that a person they were talking with was replaced. Our ability to notice changes helps us to see cars when we cross the street or to observe a person that enters a room. But why we sometimes cant see some changes around? Here are the main reasons: Our attention is focused. For example, when we read a book, we look at letters, but we dont pay any attention to the picture that is situated on the wall or to what color of socks you are wearing today. We can concentrate on the one thing only, and we miss all other things that happen out from our focus. We can expect changes based on our experience. Sometimes our expectations about any changes make us focused on them, so we easily miss the changes that happen in reality. We dont used to notice things that we dont expect to observe. Other factors like age, attention, and use of drugs affect change blindness. For example, any kind of distraction leads to increased change blindness. According to experiments, older people miss things in their visual field more often compared to young people. We are limited in taking and analyzing visual information, so it means we can see much more than our brain is able to analyze. But people can concentrate on something important for them and observe the changes using focused attention. Change blindness and problems in real world The ability to detect changes around us plays a huge role in our every day functioning. Of course, it is possible to make some examples when we can get problems in the real life because of change blindness. Social interplay: we can find ourselves making mistakes when we ask the wrong waitress for the check or cant remember which of sellers promised us to make a good discount in that huge shop. Driving: its not a secret that many accidents happened just because a driver wasnt able to notice another vehicle. Sometimes such distractions as texting or talking on phone behind the wheel can lead to fatal things. Witnesses evidence: some eyewitness that experienced change blindness, can feel hard to tell the details of crime or identify the criminal. Air traffic: if the pilot fails to observe important changes, this can easily lead to the fatal accident. allwomenstalk.com