title: How does our search engine "see" the world? The case of amodal completion.
abstract: This article illustrates a dissociation between the perceived attributes of an object and the ability of those attributes to guide the deployment of attention in visual search. Orientation is an attribute that guides search. Thus, a vertical line will "pop out" amid horizontal distractors. Amodal completion can create perceptually convincing oriented stimuli when two elements appear to form a complete object partially hidden behind an occluder. Previous work (e.g., Rensink & Enns, Vision Research, 38, 2489-2505, 1998) has shown a preattentive role for amodal completion in search tasks. Here, we show that orientation based on perceptually compelling amodal completion may fail to guide attention. The broader conclusion is that introspection is a poor guide to the capabilities of our internal search engine.
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. wolfe@search.bwh.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Jeremy M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Wolfe
authors.forename: Ester
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Reijnen
authors.forename: Todd S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Horowitz
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pedersini
authors.forename: Yair
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Pinto
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hulleman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001244:Association; D001288:Attention; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010466:Perceptual Closure; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012858:Size Perception; D055815:Young Adult