Visual Search Literature Research Articles

Multi-Channel Auditory Search: Toward Understanding Control Processes in Polychotic Auditory Listening

Two experiments are presented which develop a framework for exploring auditory information processing. The framework is referred to as polychotic listening or auditory search, and it requires a listener to aurally scan multiple simultaneous auditory streams for the appearance of a target. The first experiment examined the participant's ability to aurally scan between two and six simultaneous auditory streams of letter and digit names for the name of a target letter. The main independent variable was auditory load, or the number of active audio streams. The primary dependent variable was accuracy. Accuracy and sensitivity measures showed that as load increased, performance decreased. The second study required participants to practice the same task for ten sessions (1,800 trials). Results indicated that even with extensive practice, performance was still affected by auditory load. The relation between the present results and similar results in the visual search literature are discussed.

Guided Search 2.0 A revised model of visual search

An important component of routine visual behavior is the ability to find one item in a visual world filled with other, distracting items. This ability to performvisual search has been the subject of a large body of research in the past 15 years. This paper reviews the visual search literature and presents a model of human search behavior. Built upon the work of Neisser, Treisman, Julesz, and others, the model distinguishes between a preattentive, massively parallel stage that processes information about basic visual features (color, motion, various depth cues, etc.) across large portions of the visual field and a subsequent limited-capacity stage that performs other, more complex operations (e.g., face recognition, reading, object identification) over a limited portion of the visual field. The spatial deployment of the limited-capacity process is under attentional control. The heart of the guided search model is the idea that attentional deployment of limited resources isguided by the output of the earlier parallel processes. Guided Search 2.0 (GS2) is a revision of the model in which virtually all aspects of the model have been made more explicit and/or revised in light of new data. The paper is organized into four parts: Part 1 presents the model and the details of its computer simulation. Part 2 reviews the visual search literature on preattentive processing of basic features and shows how the GS2 simulation reproduces those results. Part 3 reviews the literature on the attentional deployment of limited-capacity processes in conjunction and serial searches and shows how the simulation handles those conditions. Finally, Part 4 deals with shortcomings of the model and unresolved issues.