Change Blindness - Essay Example

Your full July 26, Change Blindness Human memory perceives and stores only part of the information that is presented to it. We perceive only some parts of the scene in front of us and process only some information. Change blindness is the inability of the human mind to detect any changes in the scene that it has already processed and stored in the memory. This happens to everybody. When I see a person and meet him after some days, I am not able to detect any changes if some have occurred. This happens with the most familiar of persons too.

If somebody will show me a flash card and then will show me another one with some change in it, I might not be able to detect that change, unless the change is very big or obvious, or unless someone explains that to me. If I am driving on a smooth road for an hour, I am unable to detect a speed breaker or hump, because of lack of concentration, or my mind’s acceptance of one thing and inability to accept prompt changes. This is because of a lack of proper attention. Our mind accepts one visual image and then is unable to accept a change in it if not alarmed.

This happens more with older individuals, as I have observed my grandfather’s inability to detect major changes in the visual scenes shown to him. Once, he was not able to detect a ditch that was built just in the center of his regular pathway, while driving, and got his car stuck in it. This is all because of the human mind’s partial storage and improper comparison of visual scenes.