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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2021.10.15.464609

Individual differences in visual search performance extend from artificial arrays to naturalistic environments.

Botch, T. L.·Garcia, B. D.·Choi, Y. B.·Robertson, C. E.
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Abstract

Visual search is a universal human activity in naturalistic environments. Traditionally, visual search is investigated under tightly controlled conditions, where head-restricted participants locate a minimalistic target in a cluttered array presented on a computer screen. Do classic findings of visual search extend to naturalistic settings, where participants actively explore complex, real-world scenes? Here, we leverage advances in virtual reality (VR) technology to relate individual differences in classic visual search paradigms to naturalistic search behavior. In a naturalistic visual search task, participants looked for an object within their environment via a combination of head-turns and eye-movements using a head-mounted display. Then, in a classic visual search task, participants searched for a target within a simple array of colored letters using only eye-movements. We tested how set size, a property known to limit visual search within computer displays, predicts the efficiency of search behavior inside immersive, real-world scenes that vary in levels of visual clutter. We found that participants search performance was impacted by the level of visual clutter within real-world scenes. Critically, we also observed that individual differences in vi1-3sual search efficiency in classic search predicted efficiency in real-world search, but only when the comparison was limited to the forward-facing field of view for real-world search. These results demonstrate that set size is a reliable predictor of individual performance across computer-based and active, real-world visual search behavior.

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Botch, T. L., Garcia, B. D., Choi, Y. B., Robertson, C. E.. 2021-10-16. Individual differences in visual search performance extend from artificial arrays to naturalistic environments.. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.15.464609

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