Equally attending but still not seeing: An eye-tracking stuffy of change detection in own and other race faces
2007 Article type: Journal articles
Hirose, Y. and Hancock, P. J. B. (2007) Equally attending but still not seeing: An eye-tracking stuffy of change detection in own and other race faces. Visual Cognition 15(6): 647-660.
The present study aimed to investigate whether the faster change detection in own-race faces in a change blindness paradigm, reported by Humphreys, Hodsoll, and Campbell (2005) and explained in terms of people's poorer ability to discriminate other-race faces, may be explained by people's preferential attention towards own-race faces. The study by Humphreys et al. was replicated using the same stimuli, while participants' eye movements were recorded. These revealed that there was no attentional bias towards own-race faces (analysed in terms of fixation order, number, and duration), but people still detected changes in own-race faces faster than in other-race faces. The current results therefore give further support for the original claim that people are less sensitive to changes made in other-race faces, when own and other-race faces are equally attended.
