Seeing beyond salience and guidance: the role of bias and decision in visual search
Visual search is a popular tool for studying a range of questions about perception and attention, thanks to ease with which the basic paradigm can be controlled and manipulated. While often thought of as a sub-field of vision science, search tasks are significantly more complex than most other perceptual tasks, with strategy and decision playing an essential, but neglected, role. In this review, we briefly describe some of the important theoretical advances about perception and attention that have been gained from studying visual search. We argue that understanding the contribution of biases, routines, and strategies to visual search performance will lead to new insights about these decision-related processes and how they interact with perception and attention. A complete understanding of visual search can only be achieved through a holistic, as opposed to compartmentalized, understanding of these numerous contributions to search performance. We also highlight the neglected potential for variability, both within and between searchers, to contribute to our understanding of visual search.