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Peer-reviewedCC BYBMC biology

Slow change blindness from serial dependence: slowly changing objects are perceived as biased toward the past.

  • Haley G Frey1,2
  • David Whitney3,4,5
5 affiliations
  1. 1Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Vision Science Program, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. [email protected].
  2. 2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. [email protected].
  3. 3Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Vision Science Program, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
  4. 4Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
  5. 5Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
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Abstract

Background

Slow change blindness, when attentive observers fail to notice large changes that happen gradually, raises questions about how visual information is combined across time. One plausible integration strategy is serial dependence: blending information from the recent past into current perception. We investigate serial dependencies in perception of a cartoon object that slowly changes hue. In a one-shot experiment, observers each viewed a single trial with a random degree of hue change and provided one hue judgment response. Across participants, the entire morph was probed.Results

Observers' hue reports revealed an overall bias toward the past that increased in magnitude as more of the morph was experienced. In three follow-up experiments, we verified that observers experienced slow change blindness, confirmed that the bias was serial dependence, and replicated the results with a repeated-trials design.Conclusions

Overall, we provide evidence that serial dependence actively biases perception during gradual changes, sometimes producing slow change blindness.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{frey2026slow,
  title = {{Slow change blindness from serial dependence: slowly changing objects are perceived as biased toward the past.}},
  author = {Haley G Frey and David Whitney},
  journal = {BMC biology},
  year = {2026},
  month = aug,
  doi = {10.1186/s12915-026-02700-w},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42972330},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Slow change blindness from serial dependence: slowly changing objects are perceived as biased toward the past.
AU  - Haley G Frey
AU  - David Whitney
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/03
JO  - BMC biology
DO  - 10.1186/s12915-026-02700-w
UR  - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42972330
AB  - Background  Slow change blindness, when attentive observers fail to notice large changes that happen gradually, raises questions about how visual information is combined across time. One plausible integration strategy is serial dependence: blending information from the recent past into current perception. We investigate serial dependencies in perception of a cartoon object that slowly changes hue. In a one-shot experiment, observers each viewed a single trial with a random degree of hue change and provided one hue judgment response. Across participants, the entire morph was probed.Results  Observers' hue reports revealed an overall bias toward the past that increased in magnitude as more of the morph was experienced. In three follow-up experiments, we verified that observers experienced slow change blindness, confirmed that the bias was serial dependence, and replicated the results with a repeated-trials design.Conclusions  Overall, we provide evidence that serial dependence actively biases perception during gradual changes, sometimes producing slow change blindness.
SN  - 1741-7007
ER  -