A three-feature model to predict colour change blindness

Abstract

Change blindness is a striking shortcoming of our visual system which is exploited in the popular ‘Spot the difference’ game, as it makes us unable to notice large visual changes happening right before our eyes. Change blindness illustrates the fact that we see much less than we think we do. In this paper, we introduce a fully automated model to predict colour change blindness in cartoon images based on image complexity, change magnitude and observer experience. Using linear regression with only three parameters, the predictions of the proposed model correlate significantly with measured detection times. We also demonstrate the efficacy of the model to classify stimuli in terms of difficulty.