What is guided search theory?

Guided search (GS) is a model of human visual search performance, specifically of search tasks in which an observer looks for a target object among some number of distracting items. Classically, models have described two mechanisms of search: serial and parallel (Egeth, 1966).

What factors influence visual search?

It is guided to the most promising items and locations by five factors discussed here: bottom-up salience, top-down feature guidance, scene structure and meaning, the pre- vious history of search over timescales ranging from milliseconds to years, and the relative value of the targets and distractors.

What is guided search in psychology?

Guided Search is a model of visual attention that explains how we find our intended target when looking in a crowded visual field.

What variables might influence how quickly people are able to do a visual search task?

The key question is how much your reaction time—how quickly you decided whether or not the blue circle was present—was influenced by these three variables: 1) the presence or absence of the blue circle; 2) the complexity of the array; and 3) the type of search task.

Who proposed guided search theory?

Thus, we call it “guided search.” This is not an entirely new idea. Hoffman (1978, 1979) proposed a two-stage model in which a parallel first stage delivers likely targets to a slower, serial, second stage.

Why is visual search important?

Visual search, a vital task for humans and animals, has also become a common and important tool for studying many topics central to active vision and cognition ranging from spatial vision, attention, and oculomotor control to memory, decision making, and rewards.

Why is visual search research important?

What are visual search skills?

Visual search is a type of perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature (the target) among other objects or features (the distractors). Visual search can take place with or without eye movements.

Why is visual search important psychology?

What attributes guide the deployment of visual attention and how do they do it?

The colour, orientation or size attributes that define the targets can efficiently guide attention to the target.

What is the difference between feature search and conjunction search?

Feature searches require identification of a pop-out target, defined by a single feature (e.g., search for the only square among a display of circles) while conjunction searches require identification of a target defined by a combination of two features (e.g., search for a yellow square among red and yellow circles and …