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Updated: Aug 12, 2025

Detection of Architectural Distortion in Prior Mammograms via Analysis of Oriented Patterns
Published on: August 30, 2013
Visual expertise is more than meets the eye: an examination of holistic visual processing in radiologists and
Spencer Ivy1, Taren Rohovit2, Jeanine Stefanucci3
1University of Utah, Department of Philosophy, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States.
Purpose:
One of the dominant behavioral markers of visual-expert search strategy, holistic visual processing (HVP), suggests that experts process information from a larger region of space in conjunction with a more focused gaze pattern to improve search speed and accuracy. To date, extant literature suggests that visual search expertise is domain specific, including HVP and its associated behaviors.
Approach:
The current study is the first to use eye tracking to directly measure the HVP strategies of two expert groups, radiologists and architects, in comparison to one another and a novice control.
Results:
In doing so, we replicated and extended this prior research: visual expertise is domain specific. However, our eye-tracking data indicate that contrary to this prior work, HVP strategies are transferable across domains. Yet, despite the transfer of HVP strategies, there is neither reduced search time nor greater accuracy in visual search outside of an expert's domain.
Conclusions:
Therefore, our data suggest that HVP behaviors are a particular form of visual search mechanism that, outside of an expert's native search-ecology, are not necessarily conducive to more general visual search success. It is in addition to explicit knowledge of an expert's domain, how to search, and where to search, that HVP strategies are their most effective for visual search success.
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