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| Volume 7, Number 14, Article 12, Pages 1-12 |
doi:10.1167/7.14.12 |
http://journalofvision.org/7/14/12/ |
ISSN 1534-7362 |
Searching in dynamic displays: Effects of configural predictability and spatiotemporal continuity
George A. Alvarez |
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA |
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Talia Konkle |
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA |
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Aude Oliva |
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA |
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Abstract
A visual search task was used to probe how well attention can operate over a dynamically changing visual display. Participants searched for a target item among an array of distractor items while the items either shifted location several times per second or remained stationary. Not surprisingly, Experiment 1 showed that shifting display items slowed search. However, search was faster if the shift preserved the global, configural structure of the display. The results of Experiment 2 suggest that the benefit of maintaining configural structure comes from improved spatial predictability: Knowing where the searchable items will be at any given moment enables faster search. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that, given spatiotemporal continuity, attention can operate just as efficiently over a dynamically changing display as it can over a stationary display. In the real world, objects often move, but they do so in a predictable way. The current findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying search can capitalize on configural predictability and spatiotemporal continuity to enable efficient search in such dynamic situations.
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