scholarly journals The performance costs of interruption during visual search are determined by the type of search task

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Alonso ◽  
Mark Lavelle ◽  
Trafton Drew
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
Task Duration ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Interruption Costs ◽  
The Cost

AbstractPrior research has shown that interruptions lead to a variety of performance costs. However, these costs are heterogenous and poorly understood. Under some circumstances, interruptions lead to large decreases in accuracy on the primary task, whereas in others task duration increases, but task accuracy is unaffected. Presently, the underlying cause of these costs is unclear. The Memory for Goals model suggests that interruptions interfere with the ability to represent the current goal of the primary task. Here, we test the idea that working memory (WM) may play a critical role in representing the current goal and thus may underlie the observed costs associated with interruption. In two experiments, we utilized laboratory-based visual search tasks, which differed in their WM demands, in order to assess how this difference influenced the observed interruption costs. Interruptions led to more severe performance costs when the target of the search changed on each trial. When the search target was consistent across trials, the cost of interruption was greatly reduced. This suggests that the WM demands associated with the primary task play an important role in determining the performance costs of interruption. Our findings suggest that it is important for research to consider the cognitive processes a task engages in order to predict the nature of the adverse effects of interruption in applied settings such as radiology.

scholarly journals Reading problems and their connection with visual search and attention: The search for a cause continues

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heida Maria Sigurdardottir ◽  
Hilma Ros Omarsdóttir ◽  
Anna Sigridur Valgeirsdottir
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Conjunction Search ◽  
Reading Problems ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Attentional Processes ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Reading Abilities ◽  
Gating Mechanism

Attention has been hypothesized to act as a sequential gating mechanism for the orderly processing of letters in words. These same visuo-attentional processes are assumed to partake in some but not all visual search tasks. In the current study, 60 adults with varying degrees of reading abilities, ranging from expert readers to severely impaired dyslexic readers, completed an attentionally demanding visual conjunction search task thought to heavily rely on the dorsal visual stream. A visual feature search task served as an internal control. According to the dorsal view of dyslexia, reading problems should go hand in hand with specific problems in visual conjunction search – particularly elevated conjunction search slopes (time per search item) – which would be interpreted as a problem with visual attention. Results showed that reading problems were associated with slower visual search, especially conjunction search. However, problems with reading were not associated with increased conjunction search slopes but instead with increased conjunction search intercepts, traditionally not interpreted as reflecting attentional processes. Our data are hard to reconcile with hypothesized problems in dyslexia with the serial moving of an attentional spotlight across a visual scene or a page of text.

scholarly journals Stable individual differences in strategies within, but not between, visual search tasks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair D F Clarke ◽  
Jessica Irons ◽  
Warren James ◽  
Andrew B. Leber ◽  
Amelia R. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
The Other ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Test Retest Reliability ◽  
Over Time

A striking range of individual differences has recently been reported in three different visual search tasks. These differences in performance can be attributed to strategy, that is, the efficiency with which participants control their search to complete the task quickly and accurately. Here we ask if an individual's strategy and performance in one search task is correlated with how they perform in the other two. We tested 64 observers in the three tasks mentioned above over two sessions. Even though the test-retest reliability of the tasks is high, an observer's performance and strategy in one task did not reliably predict their behaviour in the other two. These results suggest search strategies are stable over time, but context-specific. To understand visual search we therefore need to account not only for differences between individuals, but also how individuals interact with the search task and context. These context-specific but stable individual differences in strategy can account for a substantial proportion of variability in search performance.

scholarly journals Visual working memory representations are shifted toward irrelevant features of distractors in intervening visual search tasks

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 311b
Author(s):  
Zachary A Lively ◽  
Gavin JP Ng ◽  
Simona Buetti ◽  
Alejandro Lleras
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Memory Representations

The effects of audiovisual task-set in visual search

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 158
Author(s):  
Pawel J. Matusz ◽  
Martin Eimer
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Attentional Control Settings ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Attentional Selectivity ◽  
Auditory Features ◽  
Target Matching

We investigated whether top-down attentional control settings can specify task-relevant features in different sensory modalities (vision and audition). Two audiovisual search tasks were used where a spatially uninformative visual singleton cue preceded a target search array. In different blocks, participants searched for a visual target (defined by colour or shape in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), or target defined by a combination of visual and auditory features (e.g., red target accompanied by a high-pitch tone). Spatial cueing effects indicative of attentional capture by target-matching visual singleton cues in the unimodal visual search task were reduced or completely eliminated when targets were audiovisually defined. The N2pc component (i.e. index attentional target selection in vision) triggered by these cues was reduced and delayed during search for audiovisual as compared to unimodal visual targets. These results provide novel evidence that the top-down control settings which guide attentional selectivity can include perceptual features from different sensory modalities.

scholarly journals Abstract goal representation in visual search by neurons in the human pre-supplementary motor area

Brain ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (11) ◽  
pp. 3530-3549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuo Wang ◽  
Adam N Mamelak ◽  
Ralph Adolphs ◽  
Ueli Rutishauser
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Cognitive Deficits ◽  
Supplementary Motor Area ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
Motor Area ◽  
Button Press ◽  
Independent Manner ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Goal Representation

Abstract The medial frontal cortex is important for goal-directed behaviours such as visual search. The pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) plays a critical role in linking higher-level goals to actions, but little is known about the responses of individual cells in this area in humans. Pre-SMA dysfunction is thought to be a critical factor in the cognitive deficits that are observed in diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, making it important to develop a better mechanistic understanding of the pre-SMA’s role in cognition. We simultaneously recorded single neurons in the human pre-SMA and eye movements while subjects performed goal-directed visual search tasks. We characterized two groups of neurons in the pre-SMA. First, 40% of neurons changed their firing rate whenever a fixation landed on the search target. These neurons responded to targets in an abstract manner across several conditions and tasks. Responses were invariant to motor output (i.e. button press or not), and to different ways of defining the search target (by instruction or pop-out). Second, ∼50% of neurons changed their response as a function of fixation order. Together, our results show that human pre-SMA neurons carry abstract signals during visual search that indicate whether a goal was reached in an action- and cue-independent manner. This suggests that the pre-SMA contributes to goal-directed behaviour by flexibly signalling goal detection and time elapsed since start of the search, and this process occurs regardless of task. These observations provide insights into how pre-SMA dysfunction might impact cognitive function.

scholarly journals Stable individual differences in strategies within, but not between, visual search tasks

2020 ◽  
pp. 174702182092919 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair DF Clarke ◽  
Jessica L Irons ◽  
Warren James ◽  
Andrew B Leber ◽  
Amelia R Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
The Other ◽  
Retest Reliability ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Test Retest Reliability ◽  
Over Time

A striking range of individual differences has recently been reported in three different visual search tasks. These differences in performance can be attributed to strategy, that is, the efficiency with which participants control their search to complete the task quickly and accurately. Here, we ask whether an individual’s strategy and performance in one search task is correlated with how they perform in the other two. We tested 64 observers and found that even though the test–retest reliability of the tasks was high, an observer’s performance and strategy in one task was not predictive of their behaviour in the other two. These results suggest search strategies are stable over time, but context-specific. To understand visual search, we therefore need to account not only for differences between individuals but also how individuals interact with the search task and context.

When visual search target is rare: overweighting or under weighting the probability?

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 1520-1524
Author(s):  
Hanshu Zhang ◽  
Joseph W. Houpt
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Threshold Model ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Target Presence ◽  
Model Assumption ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Low Prevalence

The prevalence of items in visual search may have substantial performance consequences. In laboratory visual search tasks in which the target is rare, viewers are likely to miss the target. A dual-threshold model proposed by Wolfe and Van Wert (2010) assumes that in the low prevalence condition, viewers shift their criteria resulting in more miss errors. However, from the prospective of prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), decision makers tend to overweight small probability. To explore how viewers subjectively weight the probability in the low prevalence visual search task, we compared viewers’ criteria with the optimal criteria by presenting different probability descriptions for a fixed prevalence rate. The data from this experiment indicated that target presence had an effect on viewers’ accuracy and response times but not probability descriptions. Viewers’ criteria under different probability descriptions were higher than optimal. These results are in accordance with the dual-threshold model assumption that viewers respond “target absent” more frequently than optimal, leading to more miss errors in the low prevalence condition.

Effects of Search Difficulty on the Selection, Maintenance, and Learning of Attentional Templates

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 2042-2054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eren Gunseli ◽  
Christian N. L. Olivers ◽  
Martijn Meeter
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Memory Storage ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Contralateral Delay Activity ◽  
Rate Of Learning ◽  
Late Positive Complex ◽  
Positive Complex

Prominent theories of attention claim that visual search is guided through attentional templates stored in working memory. Recently, the contralateral delay activity (CDA), an electrophysiological index of working memory storage, has been found to rapidly decrease when participants repeatedly search for the same target, suggesting that, with learning, the template moves out of working memory. However, this has only been investigated with pop-out search for distinct targets, for which a strong attentional template may not be necessary. More effortful search tasks might rely more on an active attentional template in working memory, leading to a slower handoff to long-term memory and thus a slower decline of the CDA. Using ERPs, we compared the rate of learning of attentional templates in pop-out and effortful search tasks. In two experiments, the rate of decrease in the CDA was the same for both search tasks. Similar results were found for a second component indexing working memory effort, the late positive complex. However, the late positive complex was also sensitive to anticipated search difficulty, as was expressed in a greater amplitude before the harder search task. We conclude that the amount of working memory effort invested in maintaining an attentional template, but not the rate of learning, depends on search difficulty.

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