Change blindness in simulated driving in individuals with homonymous visual field loss

Swan, Garrett; Xu, Jing; Baliutaviciute, Vilte; Bowers, Alex · 2022 · DOAJ

DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00394-6

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Summary

This study investigates change blindness—a failure to detect salient visual changes following a disruption—in individuals with homonymous visual field loss (HVFL) compared to those with normal vision (NV). The research addresses the phenomenon of "looked-but-failed-to-see" motor vehicle collisions, where drivers report looking at an object but failing to perceive it. HVFL places additional demands on memory to represent information in blind areas, potentially increasing susceptibility to awareness failures. Previous methodologies often relied on artificial visual disruptions or lacked precise gaze tracking, limiting ecological validity. This study aimed to determine if HVFL increases change blindness rates using a novel, gaze-triggered driving simulator paradigm that ensures changes occur while the driver is looking away, mimicking natural visual disruptions. The experiment involved 17 participants with HVFL and 16 with NV, all possessing good visual acuity. Participants drove in a custom-built simulator with eye-tracking capabilities. Critical events involved pedestrians suddenly appearing near crosswalks. To ensure valid change blindness conditions, changes were triggered only when participants fixated on cross-traffic on the opposite side of the intersection, ensuring the change location was visible in their seeing field both before and after the event. Events were categorized as either gaze-triggered or distance-triggered. Data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models to compare change blindness rates between groups and across hemifields (blind vs. seeing for HVFL; seeing for NV). Results indicated significant differences in change blindness rates. Participants with HVFL exhibited a higher overall rate of change blindness (16.7%) compared to those with NV (6.3%, p < 0.001). Within the HVFL group, change blindness was significantly more frequent for pedestrians appearing in the blind hemifield (34.6%) than in the seeing hemifield (10.4%, p < 0.001). Notably, even for changes appearing in the seeing hemifield, individuals with HVFL showed higher change blindness rates than those with NV (p = 0.023). There were no significant differences in change blindness rates across different stimulus conditions (e.g., presence of other pedestrians). Reaction times for detected changes were also analyzed, though the primary finding focused on detection failure rates. The findings suggest that individuals with HVFL are more susceptible to failures of visual awareness, including change blindness, than those with normal vision. This increased risk persists even when changes occur in the intact visual field, implying that the cognitive burden of managing visual field loss may impair general awareness mechanisms. These results have significant implications for driving safety, suggesting that "looked-but-failed-to-see" incidents among drivers with HVFL may be veridical failures of awareness rather than mere inattention. The study validates a novel methodology for studying change blindness in realistic driving contexts and highlights the need for further investigation into hazard detection failures in visually impaired populations.

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Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• inattentional change blindness
• looked but failed to see
• useful field of view
• peripheral attention
• hazard perception
• visual occlusion