Can Choice Blindness be predicted by working memory, visual memory and personality?

Abstract.
In general, theories of decision-making assume that people can detect mismatches between intention and outcome. However according to Johansson (2006) this is not always the case. Choice blindness (CB) effect demonstrated that people trying to choose X sometimes elect W without awareness.

The present study addressed whether individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC), Visual working memory (VWM) and personality can predict susceptibility to detect choice blindness. Participants were assessed on these three aspects and completed a computerized CB task. We found evidence that (WMC) could contribute to this experience, but it is not a good CB predictor. The experiment also found that VWM does not have a crucial role predicting CB and that people with higher levels of conscientiousness can detect more changes.

Key Words: choice blindness, working memory, visual working memory, decision making and personality.

1. Introduction It is straightforward to believe that we are the only owner of our decisions and that we make them in a complete exercise of our mental and cognitive abilities. Despite the existence of social pressure, what if we realised that our choices can easily be subverted and more surprising, that we can produce reasons to explain what is driving our manipulated choice. A group of researchers leading by Petter Johansson (2005, 2008) have been trying to answer this question using a nouvelle research design, using techniques that surreptitiously modify peoples outcomes of elections. A new paradigm known as Choice blindness (CB) (Johansson et al., 2005; Johansson et al. 2008) explains how people make decisions and more important, the coherence in their election. Johansson et al. (2005) states that people tend to fail detecting transformations of the product of their choice. CB belongs to a broad phenomenon called the introspection illusion (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977) although people have the ability to generate justifications for their behaviour, in some cases those explanations are not precise, as subjects lack a direct path to access many of their mental states or mental processes.

Nisbett and Wilson (1977) used a methodology in which participants behaviour was manipulated experimentally. In most cases, participants cannot note manipulations. A classic experiment in psychology (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959) revealed how and why people can lie to themselves: two participants whom undertook a series of un-stimulating and boring tasks. Participant-1 performed the tasks first and upon completion the researcher informed subject-1 that many people had found these tasks interesting. Then, participant-1 was asked to inform the following participant that the task was actually interesting. Despite the nature of the job, participant-1 tells participant-2 that the task was interesting; indeed, in a following survey participant-1 rated the tasks quite interesting. The first step to fully understand CB phenomenon, is clarify change blindness. In this phenomenon, changes in visual scenes are not detected by people. Early research on change blindness conducted by George McConkie (late 1970s) and John Grimes (1996), explained change blindness as a field of scene perception, demonstrating that people fail to notice changes if they are introduced during eyes movements. Later experiments illustrated that change blindness was also associated to other forms of visual interference. Rensink et al. (2000), using the "flicker" technique in which two images rotate repetitively with a blank screen (80 ms) after each image demonstrated that during the black screen, large changes can be made without participants detection. Similarly, Simons & Levin (1997) showed that change blindness also takes place even when the change is made on the scenes main actor (using a motion picture). In a similar way, other studies have demonstrated that change blindness can occur in a broad variety of visual disruptions (e.g., flashes, transparencies, temporary flickered on a display, etc). (Simons & Levin, 1998; Simons & Chabris, 1999; Simons, 1999, Most et al., 2001)

Change blindness is part of other provoked failures of consciousness, such as inattentional blindness (IB). Although, these two phenomena are related, they are not the same. Basically, in change blindness, people fail noticing changes about a display, while in IB people fail seeing somewhat exhibited in a presentation. Studies in IB have concluded that attention capacity is limited and prevent the size of information processed at a specific time. In a famous experiment, Simons & Chabris (1999) designed an experiment in which subjects were shown a short video in which two teams passed back a basketball among themselves and participants were instructed to count the amount of passes between actors (primary task). At some time in the video, a woman carrying an umbrella, or wearing a full gorilla suit

appeared in the scene. After watching the video participants were asked whether something odd took place: 50% of the subjects did not report the woman or the gorilla. Simons & Chabris (1999) found that IB is related to the level of complexity difficulty in the primary task; unexpected events are more likely to be detected if they are visually similar to the events that participants have as primary task. They concluded that conscious perception highly depends on the level of attention.

Other studies have investigated whether IB could be related with individual differences. Hannon & Richards (2010) found evidence of the responsibility of executive functions predicting IB, but few evidence showing that IB can take place because of a domain-specific differences in visual WMC (p. 318). Wagers (2009) examined whether specific personality aspects (extraversion introversion) have relation with the susceptibility to change blindness. Further research revealed that extraverted individuals are more likely to detect changes than introverted individuals. Additionally, Seegmiller et al (2011) demonstrated that individual differences in WMC modulate propensity to IB. As shown above, massive research has positioned change blindness in a robust phenomenon in cognitive psychology; however, there is not a complete understanding of the mechanisms behind this effect. (Resink, 1997; Hall & Johansson, 2008; Hannon &Richards, 2010). From change blindness to Choice Blindness According to Johansson et al. (2008) research on decision making, intentionality and change blindness have been disconnected; however, CB could serve as a bridge between them and as a general research tool to investigate decision making and introspection. Traditional research on change blindness, for example has found that people tend to fail detecting large changes in scenes in the presence of a visual intrusions reaching also a sophisticated description of attentions properties. However as the authors mention
There has been surprisingly little research aimed at investigating our ability to detect changes when the stability of the world is of particular importance to us i.e. when changes in the visual environment have effects in relation to our intentions and actions... the full potential of change blindness as a tool for studying the human mind is far from realized. Why should change blindness be used only to study perceptual aspects of cognition? (Hall & Johasson, 2008, p. 268).

In their studies, Johansson et al (2005, 2006) have varied the conventional design used in change blindness experiments adding some non-perceptual factors of cognition. The authors introduce choice as an important variable in change detection. Johansson et al. (2005) have investigated CB using an interactive design in which participants are shown a pair of face pictures, and are requested to choose the most attractive. The picture selected by the participants is given to them and then they are invited to explain the reason of their decision. However in some occasions the picture is switched given participants the wrong picture. Johansson et al.s results showed that no more than 30% of manipulated trials were detected. People tend to fail noticing the swap, but more interesting, they give introspective and elaborated arguments to hold their (switched) election. Later experiments investigated whether CB could be extended to more naturalistic settings such as buying intentions. Recently Hall et al. (2010) designed an experiment to illustrated CB in purchasing decisions. Customers were invited to participate in a two types of tea and jam testing. Researchers secretly inverted costumers options using manipulated magical jars, with two lids and with a divider inside. Again, results illustrated that no more than 30% of all manipulations was detected. Hall et al. (2010) also tried to access indirect memory effects, finding no effect of the non detected (manipulated) trials on the participants utterances of confidence in their election. An additional study (Johansson et al. in preparation) attempted to investigate whether CB is present in elections involving semantic characteristics: subjects were instructed to make imaginary elections between two different flats or cellular phones. Both options were presented at the same time in a computer screen. Each option had a simple drawing and 12 characteristics. After their decision, participants were requested to rate the importance of each characteristic, then a manipulation was introduced and when the choices were presented for second time two of the participants high rated features were changed. Again, Hall et al. (2010) found less than 50% of all manipulations were not noticed. Despite this wide-ranging research on CB, and the all promising path that it offers in the understanding of human decision making and introspection, we still do not have a complete understanding about why a person cannot detect such evident changes and produce confabulatory reports and why other person can detect changes. Eng et al. (2005), VWM is affected by two aspects: the number of items encoded and the complexity of them. However perceptual complexity is not the only factor that determined VWM. They assert that the number of items and their spatiotemporal features are also important. Additionally, Miyake et

al., (2001) show that to perform well on VWM tasks, the visual system must record the information to be integrated and encoded. Then it is possible that CB detection has a relation with individual differences in capability to encoded visual information. On the other hand, it is also possible that individuals with better perform in the central executive functioning of working memory (WMC) be more likely to detect changes. (Daneman & Carpenter 1980; Conway & Engle 1994)

We have done an exploratory study regarding the possible relationship between CB and individual differences in: visual working memory, working memory capacity and personality. Having in account that CB is a relative new concept, this study represents an important and first step in the understanding of CB effect.

2. Method 2.1 Participants and Design In total, 65 participants from the general population took part in the experiment and were recruited through the UCL Participant Pool and from posters fixed in public places. The study group consisted of 41 females and 24 males with a mean age of 26.11 (8.8 SD). Participation was voluntary and subjects were rewarded with 5 in exchange for their time. The study was approved by UCLs Institutional Ethics Committee, and all participants provided written informed consent before taking part. 2.2 Materials and design 2.2.1 CB task A computerised version of choice faces experiment (Johansson et al. 2005) was employed. In this task, participants had to made decisions regarding the attractiveness of female photographs. Thirty two pictures organized in pairs, were presented on the screen for 3 seconds. Subjects were given the task of choosing which face in each pair they found most attractive. Once they made their choice, they were asked to rate on a scale from 1 to 10 how attractive they found the face they chosen and how confident were they in their selection. In four out of 20 trials a change manipulation was introduced, in which the face selected by the participant was substituted by the ruled out picture. The manipulation always occurred on

trial 6, 10, 15 and 19. This task was carried out on Matlab software and was designed by (Yokoi, 2011) (Fig.1)

a. Two initial cards covered b. Subject chooses one face according to attractiveness c. Cards are covered again d. Subject is asked about his/her election: how attractive and confident the subjects found their selection

2.2.2 Personality Inventory The Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI) was used to assess personality style (Gosling, et al. 2003). The TIPI is a standardised 10-item measure of The Big Five (John & Srivastava, 1999, and McCrae & Costa, 1999). Both The Big Five and TIPI assess five personality bipolar factors: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The inventory consists in ten items using 7-point ratings (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). This instrument has: a). adequate levels convergence with the Big-Five measures, observer, and peer reports. b). test-retest reliability. c). patterns of predicted external correlates. d). convergence between self and observer ratings. (Gosling, et al. 2003). A paper based version of TIPI was used during this experiment. 2.2.3 Working Memory Task The Automated Operation Span Task (AOSPAN) measures WMC was used to asses WMC. (Unsworth, Heitz, Schrock, & Engle,2005; Richards et al., in press). The AOSPAN requires subjects to solve a succession of math operations while trying to recall an array of unrelated consonants. In this task, participants are requested to perform one math operation that appeared on the screen. Then they have to decide whether the answer presented is correct or incorrect. Following the maths operation, one consonant is shown. The experimental trials include 3 sets with sizes: 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, making a total of 75 letters and 75 maths problems. Order of set sizes is randomized. Five scores are computed: Operation Span (total number

of recalled sets in the same order); Total Number Correct (total consonants recalled in the correct place); Maths errors is split into speed errors and accuracy errors. (See fig 2). Previous researches have demonstrated the good testretest reliability and internal consistency of the Ospan measure (Klein & Fiss, 1999; Conway et al., 2002). This task was carried out using E-prime software.

Figure 2:
a). A consonant is introduced b) and c). Math operation and accuracy of a given answer d). A new consonant is introduced e). At the end of the round, the subject has to recall the consonants in the exact order. The subject can use a _ if cannot recall a specific consonant

2. 2.4 Visual Working Memory Task. This task is a variation from the Luck and Vogel (1997) model. Sample arrangements of 3-9 coloured squares were presented during 100 ms. onto the screen, followed by a 900 ms of break, and a 2000 ms. presentation of the test array which is either, equal to the first one or different in one feature (colour of one square). From the 100% of the 160 trials half of them (50%) were changed and the other half remained equal. (see figure 3This task was programmed on E-prime software (Schneider et al 2002).

Figure 3:
a). First screen and after 900ms, b). Second screen including a change in the blue square (instead of green)

2.3. Procedure A pilot study was done in order to prove the CB programme. Further analysis concluded to suppress male faces because during the pilot males manifested their discomfort rating men. The AOSPAN task and TIPI test were counterbalanced across participants with the C.B. task presented always in third place and the VWM at the end. This sequence was selected to avoid the possibility that participants might suspect manipulations in the other tasks apart from those made in the CB task. After the C.B. task, participants responded to a questionnaire in which they stated whether they noted some kind of manipulations in the task, and if yes how many times they believed this situation occurred. Detection of CB effect was accessed with question number 5, here participants were asked to mark them self as belonging to condition 1(no manipulated group) or 2 (manipulated group). A trial was considered as detected with the next question in which participants had to inform how many times they believe this situation occurred. Additionally researchers direct observation of participants body language and/or verbal expressions at the moment of the manipulation supported participants self-report. 3. Results Data from eighteen participants were discarded for two reasons: either (i) participants did not meet the math accuracy criterion on their Ospan scores (85% math accuracy). The maximum math accuracy rate is 100%, and the maximum Ospan score 75. (ii) participant number 72 did not finish the experiment. The remaining 47 subjects were distributed normally across variables (Ospan, VWM task, personality). No outliers were detected.

CB Effect: The overall detection of manipulated pictures in the CB task, replicated the findings of Johansson et al. (2005) and Halls et al. (2010). 46% of participants did not notice the changes done on their selected pictures. The variable CB_composite resulted from the sum of two variables: number of changes that participants report have noticed for sure and half of the number of changes that participants reported as odd. Because we manipulated

four pair of pictures, the maximum score in CB_composite was 4. (See Figure 4)

Figure 4. A. Condition 1: Percentage no noticing changes (46%). Condition 2: Percentage noticing changes (53%). B. CB_ composite: Number of detections across condition 2.

Working Memory results: A first hypothesis was that a high performance in WMC could predict CB detection. To prove this hypothesis a simple logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the responsibility that WMC has in the likelihood of a subject could detect or not CB. This analysis showed a non significant relationship between WM span and changes detection indicating that WMC span did not predict CB detection. An independent ttest on OSPAN scores revealed no significant between-group differences (t = 1.379, p = 0.939, two-tailed), means 43.14 (SD 15.87) and 36.77 (SD 15.998) for CB no detection and CB detection respectively. Correlation analyses showed a significant correlation between CB (condition_ 2) and AOSPAN total number correct score, Pearson correlation (0.413) and p (0.04). VWM results: A second hypothesis regarding VWM performance as possible predictor of CB detection was evaluated. Cowan's (2001) k (N * accuracy; N= number of squares), was used to calculate capacity limits per subject at each set size and these values were summed forming an overall VWM (VWM_T). An ANOVA was carried out between VWM_T and CB_composite. There was not a significant between-group difference (F = 1.40; Sig. = 0. 243). This finding indicates that people in condition_1 and condition_2 do not show differences performing the visual task.

Personality test: The third hypothesis according to the possible relationship between CB and personality style, particularly: conscientiousness factor. Data were first sorted by conscientiousness. The highest and lowest 20% of the score were employed to represent high

conscientiousness and low conscientiousness. An ANOVA was performed on the number of changes reported by participants. Outcomes showed a marginally significant effect, F(1, 23) = 2.55, p < .065, in which people with higher score in conscientiousness detected more changes.

4. Discussion Our findings once again replicated Johanssons et al. (2005, 2008, 2010) results, proving to some extent that choice blindness represents a robust phenomenon that can be evidenced in different contexts. We have shown the following. (i) About 50% of participants fail to notice the changes. (ii) individual differences in WMC do not seem to be useful predicting susceptibility to detect CB, although it is a correlation between number of detections and AOSPAN score total, this correlation is between subjects in the same group (condition_2) therefore it cannot explain why some people detect CB and why another do not. Our findings are contrary to Seegmiller et al. (2011) and Rizo et al. (2009), who demonstrated that those with lower WMC were more likely to show inattentional blindness than those with higher WMC, in this sense we can assume that CB is a phenomenon different from change blindness and that CB is governed by another mechanisms and laws. Also we found a number of participants with high scores in WMC who nevertheless did not detect CB. This fact implies perhaps that WMC could play a role in CB but more likely as a moderator o mediator in CB. (iii) people with better perform in VWM are not more likely to detect choice blindness. Our findings showed either no significant relationship between VWM and CB effect and correlation between this two variables. We can argue that CB is more a phenomenon in the field of decision making and that VWM does not

have a main role on this effect. Despite quality of the study, the power was low and an error type II could be present. Using G*Power software (Erdfelder, et al. 1996) found that we had needed a sample size of 134 participants.

It has been clear that choice blindness is a phenomenon that has devoted serious research and analysis in the last decade. Its existence has been fully demonstrated by the experiments carried out by Johansson et al (2005, 2006, 2008) and Hall et al. (2008, 2010); however, it is a topic that still needs further development regarding its causes and factors that support its appearance. Why some subjects can note external influence in the choosing process (such as shifting faces) is still a matter of scientific research. This document has demonstrated that

apparently there are not any particular reasons that collaborate in the appearance of choice blindness effect. It is clear the necessity to develop further research pursuing explanation of the conditions that can effectively explain CB, or on the other hand, this phenomena is the result of particular and specific circumstances that can affect the attention of the subject (such as stress, environment or interest in obtaining a result). Then, it is important to carry out systematic variations of the test presented in this document to determine whether other factors not mentioned in the document are in fact drivers of choice blindness. Additionally, it is advisable to study more than one time the same subjects to find out whether those that can avoid the CB for the first time can do it again in the second or third trial.
References Conway, A., Cowan, N., Bunting, M. F., Therriault, D. J., & Minkoff, S. R. (2002). A Latent Variable Analysis of Working Memory Capacity, Short-term Memory Capacity, Processing Speed, and General Fluid Intelligence. Intelligence, 30, 163183. Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1989). The NEO-PI/NEO-FFI manual supplement. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources. Conway A R A., Cowan N., Bunting M. F, ( 2001) The Cocktail party phenomenon revised: the importance of working memory capacity. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 8 331 - 335 Clifasefi, S. L., Takarangi, M. K. T., & Bergman, J. S. (2006). Blind drunk: The effects of alcohol on inattentional blindness. Applied Cognitive. Psychology, 20, 697704

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 58, 203-10. Erdfelder, E., Faul, F., & Buchner, A. (1996). GPOWER: A general power analysis program. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 28, 1-11. Eng, H., Y., Chen, D., Jiang, H. (2005) Visual working memory for simple and complex visual stimuli. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 12 (6), 1127-1133 Grandin, T., & Johnson, C. (2005). Animals in translation: Using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Grimes, J. (1996) On the failure to detect changes in scenes across saccades. Perception: Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, 2 (Akins, K. ed.), 89-110. Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A Very Brief Measure of the Big Five Personality Domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504-528. Hall, L. & Johansson, P. (2008). Using CB to Study Decision Making and Introspection. In P. Grdenfors & A. Wallin (Eds.) (2008). Cognition - A Smorgasbord. pp. 267-283.

Hall, L., Johansson, P., Tarning, B., Sikstrm, S., Deutgen, T. (2010) Magic at the marketplace: CB for the taste of jam and the smell of tea. Cognition, 117, 54 61. Henderson, M., Hollingworth, A., (2003) Global Transsaccadic Change Blindness During Scene Perception. Psychological Science. 14 (5) 493-497 Hannon, E. M., Richards, A. (2010). Is Inattentional Blindness Related to Individual Differences in Visual Working Memory Capacity or Executive Control functioning? Perception, 2010, 39, 309 - 319 Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikstrm, S., & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to Detect Mismatches Between Intention and Outcome in a Simple Decision Task. Science, 310, 116-119. Johansson, P. & Hall, L. (2008). From Change Blindness to CB. Psychologia. 51, 142-155. John, O. P., Naumann, L. P., & Soto, C. J. (2008). Paradigm Shift to the Integrative Big-Five Trait Taxonomy: History, Measurement, and Conceptual Issues. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 114-158). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Klein, K., & Fiss, W. H. (1999). The reliability and stability of the Turner and Engle working memory task. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 31, 429432. Masuda, T., Nisbett, R. 2006) . Culture and Change Blindness. Cognitive Science 30, 381399 McConkie, G.W., & Zola, D. (1979) Is visual Information Integrated across Successive Fixations in Reading? Perception & psychophysics, 25, 221-224. Most S B, Scholl B J, Clifford E R, Simons D J, (2005 What you see is what you set: Sustained Inattentional Blindness and the capture of awareness. Psychological Review 112 217 - 242 Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231-259. Luck S. J., Vogel E. K., (1997) The capacity of visual working memory for features and conjunctions. Nature 390 279 - 281 Schneider W., Eschman A., Zuccolotto A., (2002) E-Prime User's Guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools Inc. Seegmiller, J. K., Watson, J. M., & Strayer, D. L. (2011). Individual Differences in Susceptibility to Inattentional Blindness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0022474 Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T. (1997). Change blindness. Trends in Cognitive Science, 1, 261-267. Simons, D. J. (1999). To see but not to see: Review of Inattentional Blindness by A. Mack & I. Rock (1998). Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 43, 165-171 Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074.

Simons, D. J., Ambinder, M. S., (2005) Change Blindness Theory and Consequences. Psychological Science, 14, 144- 148. Rensink, R., ORegan, J., Clark, J. (2000) On the Failure to Detect Changes in Scenes Across Brief Interruptions. Visual Cognition 7, 127145 Rizzo, M., Sparks, J. D., McEvoy, S., Viamonte, S., Kellison, I., & Vecera, S. P. (2009). Change blindness, aging, and cognition. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 31, 245256.