Visual search for a target against a 1/f(beta) continuous textured background

We present synthetic surface textures as a novel class of stimuli for use in visual search experiments. Surface textures have certain advantages over both the arrays of abstract discrete items commonly used in search studies and photographs of natural scenes. In this study we investigate how changing the properties of the surface and target influence the difficulty of a search task. We present a comparison with Itti and Koch's saliency model and find that it fails to model human behaviour on these surfaces. In particular it does not respond to changes in orientation in the same manner as human observers.