Automatic guidance of attention during real-world visual search

Abstract

Looking for objects in cluttered natural environments is a frequent task in everyday life. This process can be difficult, as the features, locations, and times of appearance of relevant objects are often not known in advance. A mechanism by which attention is automatically biased toward information that is potentially relevant may thus be helpful. Here we tested for such a mechanism across five experiments by engaging participants in real-world visual search and then assessing attentional capture for information that was related to the search set but was otherwise irrelevant. Isolated objects captured attention while preparing to search for objects from the same category embedded in a scene, as revealed by lower detection performance (Experiment 1A). This capture effect was driven by a central processing bottleneck rather than the withdrawal of spatial attention (Experiment 1B), occurred automatically even in a secondary task (Experiment 2A), and reflected enhancement of matching information rather than suppression of non-matching information (Experiment 2B). Finally, attentional capture extended to objects that were semantically associated with the target category (Experiment 3). We conclude that attention is efficiently drawn towards a wide range of information that may be relevant for an upcoming real-world visual search. This mechanism may be adaptive, allowing us to find information useful for our behavioral goals in the face of uncertainty.

Preparatory attention in visual cortex

“…These representations may be located in areas beyond the EVC yet still show coarse retinotopic specificity . A currently debated topic is whether preparatory attention can also be directed to conceptual‐level representations, such as superordinate categories like furniture or food . In the current framework, this would be possible as long as there is a set of mid‐ or high‐level shape (or texture, or color) features that characterize the category.…”

“…[106][107][108][109] A currently debated topic is whether preparatory attention can also be directed to conceptual-level representations, such as superordinate categories like furniture or food. [110][111][112][113][114][115][116] In the current framework, this would be possible as long as there is a set of mid-or high-level shape (or texture, or color) features that characterize the category. For abstract categories that lack such characterizing visual features altogether, preparatory attention in the visual cortex is unlikely to be an efficient mechanism of attentional guidance.…”

Face search in CCTV surveillance

“…From these it is possible to make general observations demonstrating the effects of scene context (e.g. Seidl-Rathkopf, Turk-Browne, & Kastner, 2015; Wolfe, Alvarez, Rosenholtz, Kuzmova, & Sherman, 2011); searcher vigilance (e.g. Warm, Finomore, Vidulich, & Funke, 2015); target prevalence (e.g.…”

Competition between Visual Events Modulates the Influence of Salience during Free-Viewing of Naturalistic Videos

“…At the same time, higher-level factors strongly influence spatial orienting in natural scenes. When participants are asked to search for a target-object defined by specific task-instructions, prior knowledge about where that object can be usually found makes the search more efficient (Evans et al, 2011 ; Greene and Wolfe, 2011 ; Wolfe et al, 2011 ), and the discrimination between targets and distractors is largely dependent on semantic knowledge (Peelen et al, 2009 ; Draschkow et al, 2014 ; Seidl-Rathkopf et al, 2015 ). These internal factors can influence scanpaths (Humphrey and Underwood, 2009 ; Malcolm and Henderson, 2010 ) and reduce the impact of stimulus-driven signals during overt exploration of real-world scenes (Einhäuser et al, 2008 ; Stoll et al, 2015 ).…”