Childhood Environmental Unpredictability and Experimentally Primed Uncertainty in Relation to Intuitive versus Deliberate Visual Search

ABSTRACT: Visual search is an integral part of animal life. Two search strategies, intuitive vs. deliberate search, are adopted by almost all animals including humans to adapt to different extent of environmental uncertainty. In two eye-tracking experiments involving simple visual search (Study 1) and complex information search (Study 2), we used the evolutionary life history (LH) approach to investigate the interaction between childhood environmental unpredictability and primed concurrent uncertainty in enabling these two search strategies. The results indicate that when individuals with greater childhood unpredictability were exposed to uncertainty cues, they exhibited intuitive rather than deliberate visual search (i.e., fewer fixations, reduced dwell time, a larger saccade size, and fewer repeti

SUBMITTER: Wang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10141834 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature