July 2013
Volume 13, Issue 9
Free
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   July 2013
Transition features facilitate visual search in heterogeneous displays
Author Affiliations
  • Maria Yurevich
    National Research University - Higher School of Economics
  • Igor Utochkin
    National Research University - Higher School of Economics
Journal of Vision July 2013, Vol.13, 1244. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/13.9.1244
  • Views
  • Share
  • Tools
    • Alerts
      ×
      This feature is available to authenticated users only.
      Sign In or Create an Account ×
    • Get Citation

      Maria Yurevich, Igor Utochkin; Transition features facilitate visual search in heterogeneous displays. Journal of Vision 2013;13(9):1244. https://doi.org/10.1167/13.9.1244.

      Download citation file:


      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

      ×
  • Supplements
Abstract

Effects of display heterogeneity on visual search efficiency are well documented (Duncan & Humphreys, 1989). Even when searching a clearly distinguishable feature singleton, attentional salience falls down with heterogeneity of distractors (e.g., Santhi & Reeves, 2004). It is presumed that the visual system is able to preattentively separate heterogeneous features to homogenous subsets and attend each subset serially to find a singleton. The issue we addressed in our study was as follows: How does the visual system process heterogeneous sets that can’t be clearly distinguished? Theoretically, it should conjoin all heterogeneous items under the same subset representation and a singleton, therefore, would become more salient despite large heterogeneity. In our visual search task observers searched for an odd-sized target (either small, or large) among 13, 25, or 37 differently sized items. There were two homogenous conditions: (1) all distractors were of medium or (2) opposite size (e.g., large distractors with small targets and vice versa). Above, two heterogenous conditions were tested. In one such conditions all distractors were of (3) medium and opposite sizes (the difference between medium and each opposite size were clearly distinguishable ). Finally, in condition (4) four transition sizes filled the gap between medium and opposite distractors providing six heterogeneous sizes. We found in the result near parallel pattern of search performance in all positive conditions. The fastest detection was predictably found for homogenous displays with opposite sizes. The slowest detection was found for two distinct sizes of distractors. The intermediate efficiency was found for both medium homogenous and heterogeneous sets with transition sizes. RTs were substantially the same in these two conditions. This suggests that the visual system does fail to separate such transitional sets to subsets and treat them as a unitary perceptual entity opposing to a singleton (despite large heterogeneity and wide range of differences).

Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013

×
×

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

Sign in or purchase a subscription to access this content. ×

You must be signed into an individual account to use this feature.

×