Unconscious Priming: Masked Primes Facilitate Change Detection and Change Identification Performance

Change blindness refers to the finding that people have difficulty detecting changes between visual scenes, whenthese scenes are separated by a brief interruption to visual input. The masked priming paradigm was integratedinto a change detection task using real world photos to examine if unconsciously perceived words could assist inthe detection and identification of changes. Results demonstrated superior detection accuracy for deletion andlocation changes compared to addition changes and that change detection response times were shorter fordeletion than either addition or location changes. Identification of deletion and addition changes was better thanfor location changes. Both change detection and identification performances were enhanced by a masked identityprime presented prior to the first scene in the change detection task. These results provide evidence thatunattended information can assist change detection and change identification performance.