Target templates in low target-distractor discriminability visual search have higher resolution, but the advantage they provide is short-lived.

ABSTRACT: When you search repeatedly for a set of items among very similar distractors, does that make you more efficient in locating the targets? To address this, we had observers search for two categories of targets among the same set of distractors across trials. Visual and conceptual similarity of the stimuli were validated with a multidimensional scaling analysis, and separately using a deep neural network model. After a few blocks of visual search trials, the distractor set was replaced. In three experiments, we manipulated the level of discriminability between the targets and distractors before and after the distractors were replaced. Our results suggest that in the presence of repeated distractors, observers generally become more efficient. However, the difficulty of the search task does imp

SUBMITTER: Lau JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7787128 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature