Abstract
In a visual search task, if target appears more frequently in one region of the scene, over time, participants will implicitly learn the target location probability. Jiang & Swallow (2012), using letter search task, demonstrated that the attended locations are viewer centered and are not updated with viewer movement. In this study, we reexamined this issue using computer rendered illustrations of 3D scenes with clear orientation information. During learning, across multiple trials, the target was more often found in one, rich quadrant than in any one of sparse quadrants. In the testing phase, the target appeared in each quadrant with the same probability. Participants learned the probability from one view (Experiment 1) or two views 180° apart (but with the location of the rich quadrant fixed relative to the environment, Experiment 2) and, before testing, moved to a view 90° from the initial learning viewpoint. Results of both experiments demonstrated probability cuing in the training phase. In the testing phase, lack of updating (lowest reaction times found in the quadrant that maintained the same spatial relationship with the viewer as the previously rich quadrant in the learning phase) were found for most participants in Experiment 1 but only two third of the participants in Experiment 2, while the results for the rest of the participants suggest updating. Moreover, the updating tendency did not relate to the ability in identifying the rich quadrant after the search task. While the results of Experiment 1 demonstrated the tendency of lack of updating by most participants, when fixed spatial relations between the stimuli and viewer or between stimuli and environment are both possible, the results of Experiment 2 suggest that when participants were given feedback on the stable relation between the stimuli and environment, some participants have the capacity to update as they move.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016