Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays.

ABSTRACT: In the present study, we examine how observers search among complex displays. Participants were asked to search for a big red horizontal line among 119 distractor lines of various sizes, orientations and colours, leading to 36 different feature combinations. To understand how people search in such a heterogeneous display, we evolved the search display by using a genetic algorithm (Experiment 1). The best displays (i.e., displays corresponding to the fastest reaction times) were selected and combined to create new, evolved displays. Search times declined over generations. Results show that items sharing the same colour and orientation as the target disappeared over generations, implying they interfered with search, but items sharing the same colour and were 12.5° different in orientation on

SUBMITTER: Kong G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4980025 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature