Searching in clutter: Visual attention strategies of expert pilots

Abstract

Clutter can slow visual search. However, experts may develop attention strategies that alleviate the effects of clutter on search performance. In the current study we examined the effects of global and local clutter on visual search performance and attention strategies. Pilots and undergraduates searched for an elevation marker in charts of high, medium, and low global clutter. The target was in a low or high local clutter region of the chart or it was absent. High global and local clutter slowed search performance for both pilots and undergraduates. Pilots were more accurate but slower. Pilots’ search strategies differed from undergraduates in the following ways: they had more conservative criteria for responding target absent and spent more time processing the information within each fixation. Pilots and undergraduates used a coarse-to-fine search strategy in which, as the trial progressed, fixation durations increased and saccade distance decreased.