Target familiarity and visual working memory do not influence familiarity effect in visual search

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Visual Perception
• Human Factors

Background:

• The familiarity effect in visual search describes how searching for novel targets among familiar distractors is more efficient than the reverse.
• The role of distractor familiarity is established, but the influence of target familiarity on this asymmetric visual search remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how target familiarity affects visual search efficiency.
• To examine this effect under varying perceptual load conditions, particularly in the context of Chinese character recognition.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1 used two similar Chinese characters to compare search efficiency for familiar targets among familiar distractors.
• Experiment 2 employed a dual-task paradigm, adding a visual working memory task to increase perceptual load while searching for a novel target among familiar distractors.

Main Results:

• Searching for a familiar target among familiar distractors was found to be inefficient in a Chinese context.
• No significant difference in search efficiency was observed between single-task and dual-task conditions when searching for a novel target among familiar distractors.

Conclusions:

• Target familiarity does not influence visual search efficiency when distractors are familiar and semantic processing is involved.
• Additional working memory load does not impair search efficiency among familiar distractors, reinforcing the critical role of distractor familiarity.