A new look at novelty effects: guiding search away from old distractors.
We examined whether search is guided to novel distractors. In Experiment 1, subjects searched for a target among one new and a variable number of old distractors. Search displays in Experiment 2 consisted of an equal number of new, old, and familiar distractors (the latter repeated occasionally). We found that eye movements were preferentially directed to a new distractor on target-absent trials and that subjects tended to immediately fixate a new distractor after leaving the target on target-present trials. In both cases, first fixations on old distractors were consistently less frequent than could be explained by chance. We interpret these patterns as evidence for negative guidance: Subjects learn the visual features associated with the set of old distractors and then guide their search away from these features, ultimately resulting in the preferential fixation of novel distractors.
Yang
Hyejin
H
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA.
Chen
Xin
X
Zelinsky
Gregory J
GJ
D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005133:Eye Movements; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology