Visual foraging and individual characteristics: Contribution of executive functions and personality

In exhaustive visual foraging tasks, in which observers select multiple instances of two target types, they change their strategy according to the task difficulty. During easy feature-based foraging, observers locate the nearest target and often switch between target types (proximity-based strategy), while during difficult conjunction-based foraging they mainly exhaust one entire target type before turning to the second one (category-based strategy). Yet, about one third of observers continue to use a proximity-based strategy during conjunction foraging, despite the increased task difficulty. Here, we investigated whether these individual differences in foraging strategy were related to differences in individual characteristics, such as executive functioning and personality. We recruited a large sample of 304 participants who undertook an online experiment composed of feature and conjunction foraging tasks, computerized tasks measuring executive functioning (attentional flexibility, inhibitory control and visuospatial working memory), and a questionnaire measuring the Big Five personality traits. The results confirmed the presence of individual differences in foraging behavior. Moreover, regression analyses showed that foraging strategy (e.g., target selection order) and performance (e.g., reaction times) were related to executive functioning (in particular attentional flexibility and inhibitory control) and personality (in particular conscientiousness). These analyses revealed that foraging strategy should be considered as a continuum from proximity-based strategy to category-based strategy, rather than a dichotomy between foraging profiles. Altogether, our results on a large sample show, for the first time, that foraging strategy and performance are associated with individual cognitive and personality profiles, emphasizing the need to consider individual characteristics in visual foraging research.