Fruitful visual search: inhibition of return in a virtual foraging task.
Inhibition of return (IOR) has long been viewed as a foraging facilitator in visual search. We investigated the contribution of IOR in a task that approximates natural foraging more closely than typical visual search tasks. Participants in a fully immersive virtual reality environment manually searched an array of leaves for a hidden piece of fruit, using a wand to select and examine each leaf location. Search was slower than in typical IOR paradigms, taking seconds instead of a few hundred milliseconds. Participants also made a speeded response when they detected a flashing leaf that either was or was not in a previously searched location. Responses were slower when the flashing leaf was in a previously searched location than when it was in an unvisited location. These results generalize IOR to an approximation of a naturalistic visual search setting and support the hypothesis that IOR can facilitate foraging. The experiment also constitutes the first use of a fully immersive virtual reality display in the study of IOR.
Thomas
Laura E
LE
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 61820, USA. lethomas@cyrus.psych.uiuc.edu
Ambinder
Michael S
MS
Hsieh
Brendon
B
Levinthal
Brian
B
Crowell
James A
JA
Irwin
David E
DE
Kramer
Arthur F
AF
Lleras
Alejandro
A
Simons
Daniel J
DJ
Wang
Ranxiao Frances
RF
D002755:Choice Behavior; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011930:Reaction Time; D012931:Social Environment; D014584:User-Computer Interface