title: Fruitful visual search: inhibition of return in a virtual foraging task.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 61820, USA. lethomas@cyrus.psych.uiuc.edu
authors.forename: Laura E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.forename: Michael S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Ambinder
authors.forename: Brendon
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Levinthal
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Crowell
authors.forename: David E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Irwin
authors.forename: Arthur F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Kramer
authors.forename: Alejandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lleras
authors.forename: Daniel J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Simons
authors.forename: Ranxiao Frances
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: 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