Are failures to look, to represent, or to learn associated with change blindness during screen-capture video learning?

Levin, Daniel T.; Seiffert, Adriane E.; Cho, Sun-Joo; Carter, Kelly E. · 2018 · DOAJ

DOI: 10.1186/s41235-018-0142-3

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Summary

This study investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying change blindness in the context of screen-captured instructional videos, specifically examining whether failures to detect visual changes stem from failures to attend, represent, or learn. The authors address a theoretical conflict regarding whether change blindness reflects a broad failure of visual representation or a narrow failure to compare otherwise rich representations. By analyzing the relationships between gaze, change detection, visual recognition, and content learning, the research aims to determine the implications of these visual failures for educational outcomes. The researchers conducted two experiments involving undergraduate participants who viewed instructional videos demonstrating tasks in Google Forms and Sheets. Eye-tracking technology recorded gaze patterns while participants watched videos containing unexpected visual changes, such as icon substitutions or color shifts. After each video, participants reported whether they detected the change, completed forced-choice recognition tests for the pre- and post-change objects, and took multiple-choice tests to assess learning of the instructional content. Experiment 1 utilized unrehearsed videos with peripheral actions, while Experiment 2 employed rehearsed videos focused on central information and included a pre-test to control for prior knowledge. The results indicated that change detection was significantly associated with visual recognition of the changing properties. Participants who detected changes demonstrated higher accuracy in recognizing both pre- and post-change objects compared to those who missed the changes. Gaze analysis revealed that increased fixation duration on post-change properties predicted change detection, whereas pre-change gaze did not. Crucially, the study found frequent "attentive blank stares," where participants missed changes despite having fixated on both the pre- and post-change regions for sufficient durations to encode the information. Furthermore, neither change detection nor visual recognition significantly predicted performance on the content learning assessments in either experiment. The findings suggest that change blindness in instructional video settings is often associated with failures to represent visual properties, as evidenced by the link between missed changes and poor recognition. However, the prevalence of attentive blank stares indicates that looking at a changing feature does not guarantee detection, implying a failure in comparison processes. Most significantly, the lack of correlation between change detection and content learning implies that missing specific visual changes does not necessarily reflect a global failure to learn the instructional material. This dissociation suggests that change blindness may be a narrow failure that does not broadly compromise the acquisition of conceptual knowledge from visual media.

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Topics

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• inattentional change blindness
• looked but failed to see