To address unsolved issues of change detection in animated choropleth maps, we proposed the concept of 'gross change detection' and performed an experiment that empirically verifies the incidence of change blindness stems from the 'magnitude of change (MOC)', spatial distribution in animated choropleth maps. We generated experimental materials using the change-characterization arrays and the global Moran's I. Participants had 108 cases of changing maps with time duration (1 to 3 sec) and had questions. The results showed that MOC and duration affect gross change detection, but the most interesting result from our experiment was that different spatial distributions between two adjacent choropleth maps may lead the map reader to under-or over-estimate the level of gross change in the map. It implies that we should consider spatial distribution of change when we design animated choropleth maps. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.