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Decomposing visual search: evidence of multiple item-specific skills
1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. a.p.hillstrom@bangor.ac.uk
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance
|October 21, 1998
Summary
Visual search skills can be split into shared and unique components. Training on shared visual search skills fully transferred to memory search, but memory search training only partially transferred to visual search.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Perception
Background:
- Visual search and memory search are fundamental cognitive processes.
- Understanding the relationship between these processes is key to cognitive architecture.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the component skills of visual search.
- To determine the degree of overlap and independence between visual search and memory search.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a training-transfer paradigm across four experiments.
- Trained participants on either visual search or memory search tasks.
- Assessed transfer of learning to the untrained task.
Main Results:
- Visual search practice fully trained memory search when using identical targets and distractors.
- Memory search practice only partially trained visual search.
- Both shared and unique components of visual search benefited more from item-specific training.
Conclusions:
- Visual search comprises skills shared with memory search and unique skills.
- Prioritization learning plays a role in the relationship between visual and memory search components.