Open your Eyes: Blink-induced Change Blindness while Reading

Reading assistants provide users with additional information through pop-ups or other interactive events which might interrupt the flow of reading. We propose that unnoticeable changes can be made in a given text during blinks while the vision is obscured for a short period of time. Reading assistants could make use of such change blindness to adapt text in real time and without infringing on the reading experience. We developed a system to study blink-induced change blindness. In two preliminary experiments, we asked five participants to read six short texts each. Once per text and during a blink, our system changed a predetermined part of each text. In each trial, the intensity and distance of the change were systematically varied. Our results show that text changes — although obvious to bystanders — were difficult to detect for participants. Concretely, while changes that affected the appearance of large text parts were detected in 80% of the occurrences, no line-contained changes were detected.