Change Blindness in Teams: Are Three Pairs of Eyes Better than One?

Abstract

Several studies have indicted that people often fail to detect changes in visual displays under a variety of conditions. More recent research has indicated that individual operators are susceptible to change blindness in military command and control environments. Change blindness has been studied extensively but only at the individual level. Very little research has explored change blindness in the context of team performance. The purpose of this experiment was to determine if teams were more or less susceptible to change blindness than individual observers in the context of a simulated military command and control situation display. Individuals and teams monitored flicker sequences of displays containing 6, 12, 24, or 48 icons for changes in icon position. Our results revealed a team advantage but this effect was more pronounced when teams communicated. Communicating teams outperformed both non-communicating teams and individuals. However, communicating teams were not immune to change blindness but team communication played a key role in reducing change blindness and the workload associated with the change detection task.