SSAVI - The Scientific Study of Attention, Vision and Individual differences

Bonnie Angelone, Ph.D., Associate Professor

My primary area of interest is people's inability to detect changes to visual stimuli, a phenomenon known as change blindness. For example, imagine a pedestrian asked you directions to a certain location on campus. While you were talking, a couple of construction workers walk between you and the lost person carrying a large door. During this interruption the person you were talking to switches with one of the construction workers behind the door. Do you think you would notice that you were now talking to a completely different person? Although almost everyone believes they would notice that their conversation partner changed before their eyes, only about half actually do. Because change blindness is a counterintuitive finding, I became interested in why it occurs for centrally attended stimuli. I am currently working on projects to examine factors that may affect people's ability to detect changes. For example, working memory capacity, people's prior expectations, people's general knowledge about vision and individual differences are a few of the many possible factors that may influence change detection. Please contact me if you would like more information about my research or if you are interested in getting involved with any related projects (e-mail: angelone@rowan.edu, or stop by my office!!)