From lab to life: Cognitive strategy fails to influence real-world search

Brennan, Allison; Watson, Marcus R.; Kingstone, Alan; Enns, James T.

doi:10.1167/9.8.1203

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Consistent with the hypothesis that passive searchers make fewer eye movements, efficient search is often correlated with lower saccade frequency (see, e.g., Becic, Boot, & Kramer, 2008;Boot, Becic, & Kramer, 2009;Schoonard, Gould, & Miller, 1973;Shapiro & Raymond, 1989;Togami, 1984), and preventing searchers from making any eye movements can sometimes improve search (Klein & Farrell, 1989;Zelinsky & Shein berg, 1997). However, recent reports have indicated that more frequent eye movements can also be advantageous, both when peripheral targets are difficult to distinguish from distractors (Boot et al, 2009), and when searching for items in a natural environment (Brennan, Watson, Kingstone, & Enns, 2009). The possibility of a wider attentional window is supported by positive correlations between search efficiency and saccade amplitude for some tasks (Jacobs, 1986;Phillips & Edelman, 2008a, 2008b.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Looking versus seeing: Strategies alter eye movements during visual search

Watson

Brennan

Kingstone

et al. 2010

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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Visual search involves the coordination of looking (moving one's gaze to new locations) and seeing (distinguishing targets and nontargets). These two aspects of visual search are distinct from one another because high-acuity vision is possible only in a small region at the center of gaze (the fovea), and only when the eyes are stationary (a fixation). To sample detailed information from an extended scene, the eyes must move abruptly (saccade) from one location to another. In the typical inspection of a scene, this fixation-saccade cycle is repeated 3-4 times/sec.The efficiency of visual search-how rapidly and accurately the target is found-is typically measured by the time that elapses between the first glimpse of a scene and a response indicating target detection. This entails a direct trading relation between seeing and looking: Longer fixations increase information fidelity from each location at the cost of exploring fewer locations, whereas quickly exploring many locations results in reduced fidelity at each one. Studies comparing human oculomotor behavior with an ideal psychophysical observer have indicated that many participants come close to optimizing this trade-off in search (Najemnik & Geisler, 2005.In the present study, we explored the consequences of adopting particular cognitive strategies on this trading relationship. Several studies have shown that participants who are instructed to search passively search more efficiently than those who are instructed to search actively (complete instructions are in the Method section) (Smilek, Dixon, & Merikle, 2006;Smilek, Enns, Eastwood, & Merikle, 2006). Smilek, Enns, et al. (2006) hypothesized that the passive strategy gives automatic processes more influence over spatial attention, whereas the active strategy encourages greater reliance on unnecessary executive processes (cf. Wolfe, Alvarez, & Horowitz, 2000). This interpretation was bolstered by a second experiment in Smilek, Enns, et al. (2006) showing that search was improved when participants performed a simultaneous task that occupied executive processes.In the present study, we asked three broad questions concerning cognitive strategies and eye movements. First, is there any relationship between the two at all? It may be that strategy has no effect on eye movements, in that all of the participants use their eyes to sample information in essentially the same way. If so, the passive advantage found by Smilek, Dixon, and Merikle (2006) and Smilek, Enns, et al. (2006) may be purely cognitive, reflecting differences in the way scene information is processed after the eyes have sampled it.Second, if strategies alter eye movements, which oculomotor measures are affected? We hypothesized that passively instructed searchers will shift their emphasis to looking less and seeing more, spending more time on individual fixations than do active searchers. We also expected differences in other oculomotor behaviors. There are at least two ways one could see more: by expanding the attentional window of each fixation (i...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Future studies would do well to explore the effect of search instructions under a variety of environmental conditions, as our laboratory has begun doing (Brennan et al, 2009). …”

Section: Strategy Instructions Affect Individual Differences In Oculomentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking versus seeing: Strategies alter eye movements during visual search

Watson

Brennan

Kingstone

et al. 2010

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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“…Can we still find robust memory-driven guidance when stimuli do not appear only at a limited set of locations on a computer screen, but appear anywhere in a real-life environment, while participants are free to move and look wherever they want? This question is crucial because the few previous studies of real-life visual search (on topics other than memory-driven guidance) have shown that some cognitive effects that are observed in the lab do not transfer to real life (e.g., Brennan, Watson, Kingstone, & Enns, 2009). In the present study, we created a naturalistic search setting that resembles searches in daily life far more closely than has so far been done in previous studies.…”

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confidence: 99%

Eye movements in real-life search are guided by task-irrelevant working-memory content

Zhou

Lorist

Mathôt

2020

Preprint

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24Attention is automatically guided towards stimuli that match the contents of working memory. 25 This has been studied extensively using simplified computer tasks, but it has never been 26 investigated whether (yet often assumed that) memory-driven guidance also affects real-life 27 search. Here we tested this open question in a naturalistic environment that closely resembles 28 real life. In two experiments, participants wore a mobile eye-tracker, and memorized a color, 29 prior to a search task in which they looked for a target word among book covers on a bookshelf. 30The memory color was irrelevant to the search task. Nevertheless, we found that participants' 31 gaze was strongly guided towards book covers that matched the memory color. Crucially, this 32 memory-driven guidance was evident from the very start of the search period. These findings 33 support that attention is guided towards working-memory content in real-world search, and that 34 this is fast and therefore likely reflecting an automatic process. 35 36 37 Keywords: attentional capture; visual search; working memory; real-life search 157 Kassner et al., 2014) in Experiment 1 and the "Surface Tracker" plugin in Experiment 2 in the 158 Pupil Player software (version 1.18; Kassner et al., 2014) with four square markers. Gaze 159 position was detected by the infrared camera using the "dark pupil" method, and gaze samples 160 on each surface were exported. The timeframes for the start point and end point of each trial 161 were coded based on a visual inspection of the video by CZ. When gaze position seemed to be 162 biased (e.g., systematically just below a book cover), this was manually corrected in a separate 163 document. Gaze Proportion on each book color (i.e. Blue, Yellow, Red and Yellow) relative to 164 the total number of samples of each trial was calculated.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The colorful memory

Zhou

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From lab to life: Cognitive strategy fails to influence real-world search

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Looking versus seeing: Strategies alter eye movements during visual search

Looking versus seeing: Strategies alter eye movements during visual search

Eye movements in real-life search are guided by task-irrelevant working-memory content

The colorful memory

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