Visual search in the real world: evidence for the formation of distractor representations.
Visual search in the real world often requires that we search the same environment a number of times for different targets. What is the fate of information about fixated distractor objects during these searches? Here, participants searched the same array of real objects on a tabletop twice for two different targets successively whilst wearing a head-mounted eye-tracker. We found that fixating an object when it was a distractor in the first search facilitated search for that same object when it became the target in the second search. The results suggest that the location and identity of fixated distractor objects are represented to a level that guides subsequent searches, even when this information is not required at the time of fixation.
Physiology Division, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU, UK. Christina.Howard@ntu.ac.uk
Christina J
CJ
Howard
Raad G
RG
Pharaon
Christof
C
Körner
Alastair D
AD
Smith
Iain D
ID
Gilchrist
D001288:Attention; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005133:Eye Movements; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012438:Saccades