A serious game to explore human foraging in a 3D environment

Abstract

Traditional search tasks have taught us much about vision and attention. Recently, several groups have begun to use multiple-target search to explore more complex and temporally extended “foraging” behaviour. Many of these new foraging tasks, however, maintain the simplified 2D displays and response demands associated with traditional, single-target visual search. In this respect, they may fail to capture important aspects of real-world search or foraging behaviour. In the current paper, we present a serious game for mobile platforms in which human participants play the role of an animal foraging for food in a simulated 3D environment. Game settings can be adjusted, so that, for example, custom target and distractor items can be uploaded, and task parameters, such as the number of target categories or target/distractor ratio are all easy to modify. We demonstrate how the app can be used to address specific research questions by conducting two human foraging experiments. Our results indicate that in this 3D environment, a standard feature/conjunction manipulation does not lead to a reduction in foraging runs, as it is known to do in simple, 2D foraging tasks. Differences in foraging behaviour are discussed in terms of environment structure, task demands and attentional constraints.

The influence of selection modality, display dynamics and error feedback on patterns of human foraging

“…In addition to the Squirrel foraging data already mentioned (Prpic et al, 2019), two other studies from our group also appear to support a link between response speed and category selection. Jóhannesson et al (2016) had the same observers complete our standard iPad task as well as a version of the task where participants cancelled items with the aid of an eye tracker.…”

“…As we have already noted, in our previous 3D foraging study (Prpic et al, 2019), given several seconds in which to choose the next target, all participants randomly switch between conjunction target categories. In the current experiments, there was a less extreme increase in response times than seen in the 3D study.…”

“…Not only is the item selection itself less direct, but there is also the need for an additional keypress response. Recently, we have described a 3D foraging task in which participants play the role of a squirrel foraging for food in a park (Prpic et al, 2019).…”

Moving foraging into 3D: Feature versus conjunction-based foraging in virtual reality

“…Single-target search works as an analogy for looking for your phone, but as we interact with the world our goals are usually not this limited. Foraging tasks with multiple targets may paint a clearer picture of the functional principles behind attentional allocation (Cain, Vul, Clark, & Mitroff, 2012;Gilchrist, North, & Hood, 2001;Hills, Kalff, & Wiener, 2013;Jóhannesson, Kristjánsson, & Thornton, 2017;Jóhannesson, Thornton, Smith, Chetverikov, & Kristjánsson, 2016;Kristjánsson et al, 2014;Prpic et al, 2019;Tagu & Kristjansson, 2020;Thornton, de'Sperati & Kristjánsson;Wolfe, 2013). Kristjánsson et al, (2014) introduced a foraging task where participants selected multiple items from more than one target category by tapping on a two-dimensional iPad screen.…”