Change detection without awareness: Do explicit reports underestimate the representation of change in the visual system?

Evidence from many different paradigms (e.g. change blindness, inattentiona l blindness, transsaccadic integration) indicate that observers are often v ery poor at reporting changes to their visual environment. Such evidence ha s been used to suggest that the spatio-temporal coherence needed to represe nt change can only occur in the presence of focused attention. In four expe riments we use modified change blindness tasks to demonstrate (a) that sens itivity to change does occur in the absence of awareness, and (b) this sens itivity does not rely on the redeployment of attention. We discuss these re sults in relation to theories of scene perception, and propose a reinterpre tation of the role of attention in representing change.