Prechange event-related potentials predict change blindness in various attention conditions

We investigated the mechanisms of change blindness by measuring electrophysiological responses in humans to the prechange display. The change blindness paradigm included different attentional cueing (valid, invalid, no cue) conditions. The results showed that event-related potentials to the prechange display predicted change detection performance. After a valid cue, the prechange responses in detected change trials showed evidence of attentional focusing. However, in no cue and invalid cue conditions successful change detection was associated with electrophysiological responses indicating more globally distributed attention, whereas the electrophysiological pattern associated with strong attentional focusing predicted change blindness. The results suggest that specific patterns of encoding the prechange display predict change detection performance not only between different attention conditions but also within them.