The Cognitive Mechanism And Developmental Characteristic Of Choice Blindness:Inadequate Representation Or Retrieval Failure

People failed to notice conspicuous mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they were presented with,while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did,we call this effect choice blindness.The purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanism of choice blindness.Therefore,four experiments were set up in this study.Experiment 1,first of all,discussed the causes of choice blindness from the view point of the representational failure of the items,experiment 2 and 3.respectively,on the premise of representation of adequate or inadequate,discussed the influence of retrieval for choice blindness.In experiment 4.children aged 7,9 and 11 years old were selected to explore the developmental feature of choice blindness.In experiment 1,with 120 college students were randomly selected,we explored the influence of representation on choice blindness by altering the sharpness(blurry or clear)and the duration(2 seconds and 10 seconds)of the picture.The results showed that:the clearer the picture and the longer the duration is,the higher the detection rate,which supports the representational failure theory.In experiment 2.90 college students were randomly selected and the duration of the picture was extended to 20 seconds.Interference tasks with different duration(3 seconds or 60 seconds)after the selection and before the explanation of reasons,to explore the influence of retrieval on the choice blindness under the condition of sufficient representation.The results showed that:20 seconds was basically enough for the subjects to complete the comparison of each group of faces,and the difference in the detection rate was not significant under the condition of no interference and 3 seconds of interference.Compared with the two conditions,both the immediate detection rate and the total detection rate were significantly reduced after 60 seconds of interference.In experiment 3.the duration of the picture was presented for 2 seconds to investigate the influence of retrieval on the choice blindness under inadequate conditions,we selected 90 college students at random.The results showed that,compared with the non-interference condition,the detection rate of 3 seconds and 60 seconds of interference was significantly decreased,and the difference in the latter two conditions was not significant,combined with the result of experiment 2 and three,it can be seen that when the representation is relatively sufficient(20 seconds),it takes 60 seconds of interference to reduce the detection rate.When the representation is not sufficient(2 seconds),it only takes 3 seconds to reduce the detection rate.However,when the interference is extended to 60 seconds,the detection rate does not decrease further.This indicates that the influence of retrieval failure on the choice blindness may be related to the intensity of memory representation.When the representation is sufficient,the choice blindness may be caused by the forgetting of the detail representation of the picture from long-term memory.When representation is insufficient,it is caused by short-term memory fading.In experiment 4,a total of 180 primary school children were selected,including 60 children aged 7,60 children aged 9 and 60 children aged 11,we explored the developmental changes of choice blindness with age in the choice blindness task by controllins for age(7?9?11)and picture presentation time(2seconds?20 seconds).The results showed that,there is no significant difference in the detection rate between 7-year-old children and 9-year-old children,but the detection rate of 7-year-old children is significantly lower than that of 11-year-old children,moreover,the detection rate of 9-year-old children is slightly lower than that of 11-year-old children.Even for 11-year-old children,the detection rate does not exceed 40%.To sum up,the following conclusions are drawn in this study:1)Representation failure is the main cause of selective blindness,but it is not the only cause.2)When fully represented,the choice blindness is caused by the fading of long-term memory;When the representation is inadequate,choice blindness may be caused by the extinction of short-term memory.3)Choice blindness is common in children,and the age of 9-11 may be a transitional time in the development of choice blindness,as well as a period of rapid development in children's ability of change detection.