textarea | a;slkdjfk | name | a;slkdjfkd | Submit_button_x | 20 | Submit_button_y | 13 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The two experiments both were centered around the idea of change blindness, but the conclusions were only marginally similar. The CogLab experiment emphasized to a greater extent the influence of momentary distraction or losing focus (by way of the gray flash between images) in causing change blindness. The data in that experiment demonstrated that subjects were more likely to correctly determine whether there was a difference between two images and if so, spot the difference more quickly, when there was no flicker between the images compared to when the screen flashed gray in between the two pictures. This, in turn, gives way to the idea that because of the distraction or loss of focus when the flicker was used, the subject must rely on higher-ordered mental processes to determine the change and thus take more time to find the change, if there were one, instead of quickly detecting a change via visual stimulus without the flicker. Simons and Levin's (1998) experiment, in contrast, focused on testing and observing change blindness in normal, everyday interactions. The researchers found that subjects were more likely to notice changes in their environment (i.e. notice the switch in conversation partners) when the conversation partner belonged to their social group. Because of this, the conclusion drawn from the Simons and Levin's (1998) experiment explained change blindness in terms people's inability to accurately or reliably encode the details of their environment into memory. The researchers discussed how different effects, such as the in-group vs out-group theory, cause us to, in a way, gloss over many details of what we see, and how they contribute to change blindness. In my opinion, Simons and Levin's (1998) makes the more compelling case due to the fact that they pull from other established theories that fit nicely with their conclusion and help to explain the patterns they detected in the data. It is also in their favor that their experiment replicated a real-life situation as opposed to the CogLab experiment which was decidedly artificial. 
 | name | Yariana Diaz | Submit_button_x | 30 | Submit_button_y | 19 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I think the experiment performed using a door and switching experimenters is a more compelling case because it shows the reactions of people. In this experiment, there was significant difference in the pedestrian's ability to notice a difference when the experimenters were dressed by association as construction workers as opposed to regular men. In the CogLab experiment I found there to be less of a difference in my ability to notice a change if the picture flickered or did not. The experiment done at Cornell provides more persuasive data because it tests people unknowingly as opposed to CogLab where the participant knows the purpose behind the experiment and testing blindness.  | name | Geralyn Lam | Submit_button_x | 27 | Submit_button_y | 3 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea |  | name |  | Submit_button_x | 19 | Submit_button_y | 22 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Yes, these experiments generally lead to a similar conclusion: change blindness occurs even when the object that is changed is the central object, particularly when said object is not somehow immediately, personally identifiable with the specific cohort of the individual being tested. In Experiment 1, while the younger subjects were able to easily detect the change because the experimenters were close to their age group, the older subjects were typically unable to. In Experiment 2, the experimenters were differentiated from the identity of the subjects by their outfits which implied that they were construction workers; Thus, despite the fact that all of the people in the experiment were roughly the same age, the subjects were unable to detect the change of the central object.
I believe that Experiment 2 has a more compelling case because it controlled more factors - like the age group of the subjects being tested - which allows the data to be more clearly defined to be the result of the sole variable being manipulated (the independent variable).  | name | Kelly Kim | Submit_button_x | 17 | Submit_button_y | 21 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The two experiments roughly lead to the same conclusion as the CogLab experiment. In the CogLab experiment, it was generally found that participants were slower in determining differences when a barrier (the gray screen) was placed in between. In a similar way to the Simons and Levin's experiment, participants struggled to detect a change after a barrier (the door) came in between them. I think that experiment 2 makes a more compelling case, mostly because of how it specifically addressed potential social variables (i.e. in-group vs. out-group bias) that may result in change blindness. Because the experimenter's dressed up as construction workers, they were able to accurately assess the participant's reactions to change blindness while eliminating the potential in-group bias, thus resulting in a more complete and compelling set of data.  | name | Tucker Meijer | Submit_button_x | 21 | Submit_button_y | 6 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | After participating in the CogLab experiment and reading the about the psychology study performed by Simons and Levin, it is clear that both approaches validate the existence of the change blindness phenomenon. However, despite the fact that both experimental designs proved that change blindness occurs, there is a clear distinction in the conclusions that can be drawn from the two studies. Specifically, the CogLab test proves that change blindness occurs, but does not provide a clear indication of the situational factors that lead to the observed oversight. As stated within the article by Simons and Levin, tests using the flicker paradigm fail to emphasize the role of the individual’s attention in their observance of change. With experimental designs in which the participant is only passively involved, it could be argued that the failure to notice subtle differences in respective images is the direct result of the individual’s lack of engagement with the media being viewed. 

In the Simons and Levin analogue of the change blindness experiment, the data yields the conclusion that change blindness is observed even when an individual is actively engaged in scene experiencing change. For this reason, I believe that Simons and Levin’s rendition of the study yields to a conclusion that is significantly more compelling. With their experiment, the researchers were able to demonstrate that change blindness is not only limited to the laboratory setting, but can happen in nearly any situation in which we find ourselves. 
 | name | Scott Nelson | Submit_button_x | 0 | Submit_button_y | 0 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Yes they both incorporate some type of interruption of our perception. In the Simon and Levin experiment this is the door interrupting the conversation and in the CogLab experiment this is the grey frame or "mask". I think both experiments make compelling cases, however the Simon and Levin experiment was conducted in the real world which gives it more realistic reliability. | name | Ian Kadish | Submit_button_x | 28 | Submit_button_y | 11 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The change blindness in these two experiments occur under similar conditions. In both, the two images that are to be compared, whether it is the image being displayed on the screen, or the real life view of a person, gets interrupted momentarily, either by blacking out the screen or by a physical door. We see that in both conditions, change blindness is observed when the observer is focusing on some other stimuli. In the case of the web experiment it is a part of the image that is not changing, and in the case of the Levin's experiment it is the map and giving directions. I think Levin's experiment is a more dramatic way for showing change blindness because the results are from real unsuspecting people on the street. However, I think the online experiment is a more compelling case because variables such as the images in question, and experimental conditions can be controlled more effectively in the case of the online experiment. Since the online experiment is able to keep more variables in check, I think it provides better data. | name | Rakin Muhtadi | Submit_button_x | 29 | Submit_button_y | 19 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The experiments both seem to suggest that this change blindness results when the person is identified as being in a different social group (i.e. different age). This is because we have a greater need to differentiate between people in our in-groups as opposed to out-groups. I think that the second experiment provides more persuasive data. In the first experiment, the difference seems to be a result of age. The older participants could just be less attentive as a result of their age. If the experimenters themselves were quite old, then perhaps the older participants would still not be able to differentiate the two experimenters. However, the 2nd experiment shows that even young students fail to differentiate when the construction hat is worn. One student even said that they coded the researcher as a "construction worker" and gave it no further thought. | name | Eugene Lee | Submit_button_x | 37 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Both experiments do lead roughly to the same conclusion regarding the conditions under which change blindness is observed. While Simons and Levin's experiments make use of a real life situation in comparison to the cog lab's use of a picture, both show that a brief obstruction of one's view of something followed by a change can cause change blindness. I believe that cog lab's experiment makes a more compelling case because it utilizes a flicker vs. non-flicker variable. This allows the experimenters to justify how the obstruction of one's view (even if it is only for a second) can cause change blindness by comparing the flicker results vs. the non-flicker results. On the other hand, Simons and Levin's experiments only focus on the effect of a flicker and then examine how social groups affect their findings. Additionally, in Simons and Levin's 1st experiment just over 50% did not notice the change which does not seem to be very significant.  | name | Connor Sheehan  | Submit_button_x | 25 | Submit_button_y | 15 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I think that these two experiments come to compatible conclusions. The article demonstrates that substantial changes to the objects with which we are directly
interacting can easily go unnoticed. The fact that our brains don't always compare visual features from one instant to the next to form a continuous representation is shown in the fact that, even when looking for changes to a scene, our brains can still struggle to find the differences. However, the CogLab focused more on the effect of an interruption to a scene than the article did. I think that the article made a much more compelling case, as they discussed possible flaws in their experiments, explored the reasoning behind their experiments, and cited many supporting studies. | name | Marah Brubaker | Submit_button_x | 39 | Submit_button_y | 10 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | These two experiments are actually quite different in that the conditions under which the change blindness is observed is based on two very different factors. In the CogLab, we were told exactly what was going to happen, how many photos would actually change, and the precise methods. We could take as long as we want to recognize the change, so the conditions do not reflect reality. In Simons and Levin's experiment, the change blindness is only observed when the experimenter is a part of the participants' in-group. This experiment provides a far more compelling case, as one would assume that engaging with another person requires full attention to detail. Furthermore, it is not as important to miss a small environmental change in the large scheme of things, but it is far more significant if we cannot recognize a change that our attention is focused on. This study also has important implications for out-group homogeneity and change blindness. It also interests me as to why the participants that did detect a change did not act surprised or confused during the conversation.  | name | Alexis Sinclair  | Submit_button_x | 35 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I don't think that the experiments lead to the same conclusion regarding to the conditions. In the CogLab, participants were asked to look for changes. In Simons and Levin's experiment, the participants had to notice without being primed. The experiments do seem linked since the flashing gray screen would be like the door. In addition, it doesn't seem like things would suddenly disappear or change in real life. There is always some kind of in-between time (like switching the people behind a door). Thus, I think Simons and Levin's experiment makes the more compelling case. It seems to apply more to real-life situations, and draws attention to how humans don't take note of many things and can be blind to changes. However, the CogLab experiment is also compelling in a different way, given the large number of people who have completed the test, and the similar results that it took more time to identify changes when there was a gray flicker. | name | Annie Chen | Submit_button_x | 22 | Submit_button_y | 15 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The only common thread between the two experiments was the door, which was mirrored in the CogLab by the "flicker" condition. In the CogLab, it was more difficult to ascertain the difference between two separate frames because the gray screen that is displayed between them creates the conditions necessary for change blindness. The door in the real-life experiment served this purpose, but the real life experiment extended beyond change blindness to focus more on an in-group/out-group phenomenon, wherein one is more likely to notice changes when the person in question is a member of your in-group. In this respect, the two experiments reached altogether differing conclusions regarding the actual source of change blindness. The real-life experiment provides more persuasive data because it is essentially the CogLab experiment except with an added wrinkle that provides an actual theory as to why these data are observed. Additionally, (at least in my opinion) errors are easier to make in the CogLab than in real life, which can alter the data a bit. That is, some of the changes are relatively minute and require a lot of scanning and attention to notice, whereas in the Simons and Levin experiment, the change was extremely salient yet went largely unnoticed due to an in/out group theory provided by the authors. | name | Brent Harrison | Submit_button_x | 23 | Submit_button_y | 17 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | In the CogLab experiment, change blindness was observed more frequently under flicker conditions, in which a blank grey box appeared between the two pictures. Under the flicker conditions, the percentage of subjects who correctly identified a change between the pictures was lower. (It was also found that the response time was slower). This made sense because the grey box prevented the change from being detected automatically. Instead, the subject had to systematically search the scene until the changed object was found. From this experiment, it was concluded that our visual system doesn't automatically compare the details from one instant to the next. The "critical factor" in this case was attention. In order to see the change, we must pay attention to the object. Simons and Levin came to a similar conclusion, but elaborated further by studying change blindness in the real world. Through their examination of in-group and out-group phenomena, Simons and Levin found that change detection is not solely dependent on attention. In fact, successfully detecting change requires encoding features that distinguish the original from the changed. I believe that the second experiment makes a more compelling case because the data demonstrates how change blindness can occur in situations in which most (naive) people would have predicted successful change detection. In my opinion, the methods used clearly follow a logical order that attempts to explain why some changes are detected more readily than others. In doing so, the second experiment refines the conclusions drawn in the first experiment.   | name | Hope Kim | Submit_button_x | 12 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | CogLab distinguishes the difference in noticing change when separated by a gray field vs. not, while Simons and Levin's experiment consistently has this idea of a "gray field" (the door). So CogLab is able to conclude that it is more likely that someone notices a change (and more quickly too) when there is no gray field, while Simon's and Levin's experiment concludes that you are more likely to notice changes in your social "in-group" versus your social "out-group". In my opinion, Simons and Levin's argument was more compelling because they readjusted the experiment to test their hypothesis multiple times and in different ways. I also can relate to it because looking back now, I think that I study people's appearances more often when they are closer to my age or in my personal "in-group".  | name | Mae Cromwell | Submit_button_x | 16 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Yes, they both confirm that the initial encoding of a scene or object is not very detailed. General observations are encoded and expectations about the object or scene are made. I think the CogLab experiment is more convincing simply because of the larger amount of data used. The global data provides a a large sample to aid in the roof of the flicker paradigm. Furthermore, the CogLab experiment allows comparison between a situation where the flicker is present and where it is not, proving that flicker contributes to change blindness. However, the Simons and Levin experiment is convincing in that they use a real life scenario in which most subjects are oblivious changes that occurred. They were also able to provide a nice experiment that supported their hypothesis that out-group bias contributed to higher frequency of change blindness. However, their sample size was quite small and their interview process introduced some bias in results as evidenced by those that responded that nothing unusual had happened but also claimed they noticed the change. The CogLab experiment on the other hand was completely unbiased.  | name | Jeff Anderson | Submit_button_x | 31 | Submit_button_y | 14 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Both experiments conclude there usually needs to be a delay between the two changed conditions in order for change blindness to occur. The cognitive lab experiment is more compelling because there are less possible confounds and there is a control variable to conclude something about change blindness. Simons and Levin's experiment has social factors and other confounds that could lead to participants not noticing the change or not telling the researchers they in fact did notice change. The CogLab was straightforward and used two different conditions to deduce something about change blindness. Therefore the data from the CogLab is more persuasive in my opinion.  | name | Christopher Roll | Submit_button_x | 22 | Submit_button_y | 13 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The CogLab experiment illustrates how the flicker paradigm can affect change detection- that is, the flicker prevents change cues from being registered, resulting in 
smaller proportion correct and slower reaction time. But here, the subjects are presented with images, and thus underwent a passive process. The Simons and Levin’s experiment places subjects in a social situation and provides them with one object to attend to (although it could be argued that the task of giving directions and looking at a map is distracting). This incorporates the concept of in-groups and out-groups, because the subject is more likely to encode differentiating features of an experimenter in his/her own group, whereas a member of an out-group would simply be categorized as a representation of that out-group and not as an individual. These experiments do lead to similar conclusions, although one approaches the question in a social context and addresses a follow-up question. 

I find the Simons and Levin’s more compelling because the CogLab one seems like common sense, while this experiment introduces real-world factors into the equation, using concepts from social psychology. Due to the straightforward nature of the CogLab, its data are very clear and persuasive (especially when looking at the global data), that the flicker lowers the subjects’ accuracy and reaction time. The other experiment has much smaller sample and a number of confounding variables (as addressed in the discussion section- social anxiety of the task, distraction of the map, unreliable human responses etc.) | name | Phuong-Nghi Pham | Submit_button_x | 28 | Submit_button_y | 25 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I have yet to get the code for CogLab, so my conclusions will come from a comparison of the study and the background. Their general hypothesis is the same, that only if one attends to a specific feature can he notice a change in that feature. In the case of the Simons and Levin study, certain subjects only attend to the examiner's membership in an outgroup (i.e. young person or construction worker). Since that membership doesn't change, the subject doesn't notice the fact that he is speaking to a different person. Much the same is tested in the CogLab. If a person only encodes the image of the street as a picture of a city, they won't notice a difference since the picture is still of the same city. Only if they attend to the specific changing feature will they ditch their change blindness. The CogLab is slightly more extensive and controlled. It also addresses the difference in likelihood of observing change blindness when a neutral image is presented between the two changing images and when the two images are consecutive. It also eliminates the confounding variable of the social aspects of the Simons and Levin experiment. A person might think that they notice the change, but not say anything about it to avoid being bizarre. They also have no reason to expect such an unusual switch to take place in a seemingly commonplace interaction. While the Simons and Levin study might be more stunning, the CogLab seems to provide a more empirically sound experiment. This is supported by comparing the sample of fifteen people at Cornell to a global data set assembled by CogLab.  | name | John Malague | Submit_button_x | 25 | Submit_button_y | 18 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | They don't lead to the same conclusion. The CogLab experiment suggests that people need to pay attention to an object to notice that the object changed. Simon and Levin showed that merely paying attention to an object is not always sufficient for noticing a change. I think Simon and Levin's experiment makes a more compelling case. The pedestrians in their experiment had to pay attention to the experimenter asking for directions, but the pedestrians didn't always notice the change. That seems to pretty clearly show that just because you are paying attention to something, doesn't mean you will notice a change in it. This suggests that there are other factors that might affect change blindness. One that Simons and Levin looked at was in-group or out-group status. In all, I think the Simons and Levin experiment just gives a little more nuanced description of the conditions that lead to change blindness. | name | Matthew Bonomo | Submit_button_x | 14 | Submit_button_y | 23 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Both the CogLab and Simons and Levin's experiments suggest that people are generally unable or slow to detect change unless the aspect of what has changed is what they were focusing on. In the CogLab, in order to detect what changed, I needed to look at each part of the picture individually and compare it to the changed picture until I came upon the part of the picture which was changing. In Simons and Levin's experiment, people who were close in age to the experimenters were more likely to notice the change because the experimenters were part of their social group (as defined by age) and therefore the pedestrians were more focused on individual details about the experimenters rather than just the general perception that they are speaking with a young man. I think the Simons and Levin experiment is more persuasive because it used physical, real-world encounters to collect data rather than relying on responses to a 2d representation of a scene. The CogLab experiment does not account for any type of systematic difference in responses to virtual scenes and real ones.  | name | Maggie Shea | Submit_button_x | 16 | Submit_button_y | 8 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Simons and Levin reach the conclusion that in-group and out-group effects can modulate whether one experiences change blindness. Despite their use of a pseudo-flicker condition, with a momentary barrier placed between the changing object and the subject, in the Simons & Levin experiment, the flicker condition didn't always result in difficulty recognizing changes in objects. Individuals within the same social group as the experimenter/changing object more easily recognized change in the experimenter. This is therefore a more compelling experimental paradigm, as it provides nuance to the  idea of change blindness. It provides conclusions that are more applicable to real-world cognition, situated in a network of relationships, than the static photo paradigm.  | name | Carlos Johnson-Cruz  | Submit_button_x | 14 | Submit_button_y | 21 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I feel that the Simon and Levin paradigm provides more persuasive data. This is because the experiments that they did more resembled the real world. The CogLab activity dealt with still images, and while it sufficed to explain that we do exhibit change blindness, it wasn't representative of reality. The Simons and Levin study focused on moving people. Also, the two researchers make interesting connections to social psychological terms like outgroup homogeneity.   | name | Shaunpaul Jones | Submit_button_x | 24 | Submit_button_y | 0 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | These experiments have similar conclusions in stressing that diversion of attention leads to change blindness. The conclusion of the CogLab experiment is highlighting the importance in attention for noticing change with better response time. This was shown by the difference in mean performance on sets with flickering (attention diverted) vs non flickering (attention). The Simons and Levin's (1998) experiment demonstrates this further by through the use of in-group and out-group subjects to show that performance in identifying the switch of the experimenter is better when the experimenters and subjects are close in age (in-group). This is said to be due to the fact that people in the same in-group pay more attention to the detail of a person. Even as one subject said, she didn't look at the construction worker experimenter with any detail, but formed an abstract representation. I think because Simons and Levin's experiment goes deep into seeking to understand condition under which change blindness is observed, the make a more compelling case. It highlights that people in our "in-group" are demanding our attention without us being aware of it.  | name | Benaias Esayeas  | Submit_button_x | 19 | Submit_button_y | 18 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Simons and Levin's experiment provided great data because it explored real life situations rather than pictures and moving pictures. These real life situations are a better representation of the true visual details we see everyday. The classification of the "in-group" vs "out-group" was interesting because I didn't realize that I notice many more details about people who are like me than people who are older than me or belong to a different social group.   | name | Sophia Lesperance | Submit_button_x | 30 | Submit_button_y | 23 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | These experiments indicate that change blindness depends directly on encoding information about the people changing. For both experiments, the out- group (the older generation in the first experiment and the construction workers in the second) was deemed as different than the participant and thus not worthy of keen observation/ coding. I believe the second experiment is more compelling. It had less variable participants, as all participants were students this time. Furthermore, the introduction of the construction workers creates a more polarized "out- group". The marked difference of attire from the first experiment shows more definitively the significance of the lack of coding in exchange for abstraction of the "out- groupers". | name | Advaita Rao- Sharma | Submit_button_x | 30 | Submit_button_y | 12 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Although the CogLab experiment was conducted on the computer and Simons and Levin's experiment was conducted in the real world, they included similar elements. The CogLab tested the participant's ability to detect a change in two almost-identical pictures displayed in rapid succession, sometimes with a blank screen in between. Simons and Levin's experiment tested the participant's ability to detect a change in the appearance of the person with whom he/she was having a conversation with. The CogLab's results showed that while it was very easy to see changes in pictures shown in succession without a blank screen in between, it was much harder to find changes in pictures shown with the blank screen (which acted similarly to natural eye movements). In the latter situation, changes were detected faster when the change was related to centrally attended objects. Simons and Levin's experiment showed that participants had a hard time detecting a change in the experimenter they were talking to. What was noteworthy was that participants tended to remember more details about experimenters who were in their own age or social group; those in the "out-group" were perceived as a whole without distinguishing traits. In other words, when the students paid more attention to the people they were talking to, they were able to register changes better. This conclusion is similar to that of the CogLab. I personally think the CogLab makes a more compelling case, although it might not accurately represent change blindness in real-life situations. However, the experiment is well-controlled and gets the point across - the accuracy of our visual memorization of situations is fairly low except for objects we are focused on. In Simons and Levin's experiment, there are many factors that might have influenced the accuracy of the results - for example, a student noticing the change in "construction workers" because one reminded him/her of someone he/she knew, students having their thought processes interrupted because they were weirded out by the people moving the door, or students who were focused on trying to think of the right directions.       | name | Amber Liu | Submit_button_x | 39 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | This experiment at first reminded me of proximal and distal stimulu, as here the distal stimulu is a person’s visual environment and through proximal stimulu it gets translated into our perception. Reading that even our short term memory of a place can be distorted based on our abstract expectation of our world was very striking. Our previously based perception of the world dictates and chooses what we should see. In this particular experiment’s findings, familiarity with a social group is our center of interest. Before the actual experiment’s layout, I found the experiment about actors in a scene to be very interesting, and could not understand how people would fail to notice such a big change in a lead actor. When the method of the experiment was explained, I found the door changing idea to be very smart. At first, reading that the replacing person would be different from the previous with clothing, height and voice and obviously facial features, I was sure that people would certainly notice this change. However the experiment proved my assumption to be wrong. What the previous experiments in this field suggested as passive nature of stimulu, this experiment shows that, does not affect change blindness. The ones failed more to notice the swap of people  appeared to be older; the experiment suggested that the younger group payed more attention and spended more energy to encode the visual change because they were in same social group.  The older pedestrians just looked at the experimentors as members of a social group different than theirs. I thought at this point, one experiment could have been done with older experimentors, to eliminate the possible outcomes relating to age and cognitive capacities. The assumpiton in the second experiment was that people see other people belonging to outer groups as less variable. I thought this applies to social interactions of different groups even in Amherst College. The outer group in this case was construction workers and this as a result would cause no individuation in younger pedestrians. The experiments revealed that the younger people in fact could not notice this swap of people as they did before. The experiment continued to discuss possible distortions in conduct, like whether the pedestrians’ attention on conversation and map affected their understanding of the environment. It was very insightful to see how we expect the world to be static, and approach it with our biases. Even when web link our eyes, we assume the world stays the way it is; I am very interested if we can ever surpass such assumptions. ( I was not registered to CogLab at this time due to add/drop uncertainities, so I just wrote about my understanding of this experiment.) | name | Yagmur Idil Ozdemir | Submit_button_x | 49 | Submit_button_y | 10 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | In Simons and Levin's experiment, two researchers worked together to test change blindness by asking a pedestrian for directions, distracting the participant, and then switching places. The results from both experiments showed that surprisingly few (46%, 33%) participants noticed the change. The CogLab experiment tests whether participants can notice slight changes to a scene when there is a blank screen flashed in between both scenes. The results showed that participants had a hard time locating a difference in scenes when the blank screen was flashed in between showings. While both experiments do a good job of proving change blindness and lead to the same conclusion, I believe Simons and Levin's experiment is more applicable to the real world simply because it is performed in a real world setting rather than on a computer.   | name | Michael Riopel  | Submit_button_x | 21 | Submit_button_y | 9 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Yes, they both lead to the same conclusion regarding the conditions under which change blindness is observed. Simons and Levin's (1998) experiment makes a more compelling case since it is using real life situations. The CogLab experiment was using hypothetical/unrealistic changes in the images. Hence, Simons and Levin's experiment provides the more persuasive data since they used real life situations. | name | Alifayaz Abdulzahir | Submit_button_x | 26 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The experiments do indeed lead to the same conclusion regarding the fact that a ‘flicker’, i.e. a momentary ‘change of scenery’ in between our view of the world, plays a large part in producing change blindness.

I think the Simons and Levin's experiment makes a more compelling case, because it took place in the real world instead of online. For somebody to not notice an exchange of actual PEOPLE in front of them and who they are actually talking to, is a much bigger finding than a situation where a participant is sitting in front of a computer and is not even restricted by a time limit to decide whether or not there is a change between images (instead of remembering retroactively, as the participants in the former experiment were asked to do). In addition, the changes in the CogLab experiment were rather obvious, e.g. an entire face disappearing from a huge billboard in the center of a picture, and were thus not hard to detect when one is already aware that there is a 50% chance that something has changed between two images. This is in contrast to the Simons and Levin’s experiment, where subjects might be reluctant to say ‘I noticed an entire person being switched!’ for fear of this claim sounding too outlandish. 
 | name | Alizeh Sethi  | Submit_button_x | 25 | Submit_button_y | 15 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html |