Is there a mismatch negativity during change blindness?

ABSTRACT

The mismatch negativity is an event-related potential that represents a preattentive change detection process. The aim of this study was to determine whether the mismatch negativity was present during 'change blindness', a striking phenomenon in which surprisingly large changes in a complex scene are not seen when they occur during a blink or an eye movement. In this study, large orientation changes elicited a candidate mismatch negativity between 180 and 320 ms that appeared to be independent of participants' performance (uncued 76% correct, miscued 59% correct with chance performance at 50%). This negativity, however, disappeared in the miscued 'change blind' condition. In conclusion, the mismatch negativity does not appear to be present during change blindness suggesting that in complex scenes even large changes may not trigger preattentive change detection processes.