The role of categorization in visual search for orientation.

Wolfe, Jeremy M.; Friedman‐Hill, Stacia R.; Stewart, Marion I.; O’Connell, Kathleen

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.18.1.34

Cited by 238 publications

(232 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Search for vertical lines, even when not popping out from the pattern, could probably be made by inspecting patches of line elements rather than single elements. Such a strategy may also explain why the slopes of the RTs for missing targets were not exactly double those for nonsalient targets (Conditions A and B), an observation also made by Wolfe, Friedman-Hill, Stewart, and O'Connell (1992).…”

Section: \ \ " -I I I I I I I I \ -mentioning

confidence: 71%

Feature analysis and the role of similarity in preattentive vision

Nothdurft

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

234

178

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Texture arrays of line elements at various orientations were used to study three phenomena of preattentive vision. Subjects were asked (1) to discriminate texture areas and to distinguish their form (experiments on texture segmentation); (2) to detect salient or vertical line elements (experiments on pop-out); and (3) to identify configurations of similar or dissimilar targets (experiments on grouping). Within the patterns, line orientation was systematically varied to distinguish the effect of differences between areas from the effect of similarity within areas. In all of the experiments, performance was found to depend on local orientation contrast at texture borders rather than on the analysis ofline orientation itself. Texture areas were correctly identified only when the orientation contrast at the border well exceeded the overall variation of line orientation in the pattern. Similarly, only target elements with high local orientation contrast were detected fast and "in parallel." Targets with an orientation contrast lower than background variation required serial search. Preattentive grouping was found to depend on saliency, as defined by local orientation contrast, but not on the similarity of line elements. In addition to local orientation contrast, which played an important role in all of the visual phenomena studied, influences from the alignment of line elements with the outline of a figure were also seen.Three spontaneous perceptual phenomena have been described as occurring in the visual inspection of line arrays with differently oriented elements: (1) The pattern may segregate into distinct areas, each of which appears to be separated from neighboring areas by a clearly visible (but physically nonexistent) texture border (texture segmentation; Beck, 1966bBeck, , 1972Beck, , 1982Julesz, 1975Julesz, , 1984Olson & Attneave, 1970). (2) Individual line elements at an orientation different from that of the rest of the pattern appear to be particularly salient and are instantaneously detected in search experiments (pop-out;Treisman, 1985Treisman, , 1986Treisman & Gormican, 1988). (3) Lines at similar orientations may be seen as grouping together, forming distinct ensembles of elements within the line pattern (grouping; Beck, 1966a Beck, , 1967. Although these phenomena have been discovered independently of each other, and although they have been quantitatively assessed in different ways, they share important properties. They can all be achieved by preattentive visionthat is, without detailed analysis of the pattern-and they all seem to recruit from the same set of visual features. In general, elements that do not segregate in texture segmentation tasks also do not pop out from each' other or provide perceptual grouping. Controversial reports, ac-I would like to thank Peter Ruhlender for a suggestion concerning Experiment 5 and Jacob Beck, Rick Gurnsey. Lester Krueger. Jeremy Wolfe. and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. I am grateful to all of the subjects ...

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Section: \ \ " -I I I I I I I I \ -mentioning

confidence: 71%

Feature analysis and the role of similarity in preattentive vision

Nothdurft

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

234

178

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“…This incorporates previous feature-based accounts of linearly separability; for example, in a display defined by color, search has been shown to be efficient if all the elements extend along a line in twodimensional color space and the target is located at one end (Bauer, Jolicoeur, & Cowan, 1996;D'Zmura, 1991). Similarly for orientation, search for the steepest item has been shown to be more efficient than that for the third steepest item (Wolfe, Friedman-Hill, Stewart, & O'Connell, 1992). Since auditory cues were effective only for the lowest and highest spatial frequencies, one could explain the search benefits using a topdown strategy where participants search for the lowest spatial frequency items for a slowly modulating sound and the opposite for a fast modulating sound.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Cross-modal associations between vision, touch, and audition influence visual search through top-down attention, not bottom-up capture

Orchard-Mills

Alais

Burg

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Recently, Guzman-Martinez, Ortega, Grabowecky, Mossbridge, and Suzuki (Current Biology : CB, 22(5), [383][384][385][386][387][388] 2012) reported that observers could systematically match auditory amplitude modulations and tactile amplitude modulations to visual spatial frequencies, proposing that these cross-modal matches produced automatic attentional effects. Using a series of visual search tasks, we investigated whether informative auditory, tactile, or bimodal cues can guide attention toward a visual Gabor of matched spatial frequency (among others with different spatial frequencies). These cues improved visual search for some but not all frequencies. Auditory cues improved search only for the lowest and highest spatial frequencies, whereas tactile cues were more effective and frequency specific, although less effective than visual cues. Importantly, although tactile cues could produce efficient search when informative, they had no effect when uninformative. This suggests that cross-modal frequency matching occurs at a cognitive rather than sensory level and, therefore, influences visual search through voluntary, goaldirected behavior, rather than automatic attentional capture.

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“…In fact, it may be that preattentive processes only use information about the categorical status of items. In orientation, that means that it is only easy to find a target if it is uniquely 'steep', 'shallow', 'tilted left' or 'right [20,21]. Thus, vertical is hard to find among^20 deg (Fig.…”

Section: Trends In Cognitive Sciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving towards solutions to some enduring controversies in visual search

Wolfe

2003

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Self Cite

245

191

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How do we find a target item in a visual world filled with distractors? A quarter of a century ago, in her influential 'Feature Integration Theory (FIT)', Treisman proposed a two-stage solution to the problem of visual search: a preattentive stage that could process a limited number of basic features in parallel and an attentive stage that could perform more complex acts of recognition, one object at a time. The theory posed a series of problems. What is the nature of that preattentive stage? How do serial and parallel processes interact? How does a search unfold over time? Recent work has shed new light on these issues.Visual search is one of those things we do all day, every day, from finding milk in the refrigerator to locating our car in the car-park. We pay others to do it at airport security checks and in radiology laboratories and, in the past quarter of a century, we have done a great deal of it in our research laboratories. Laboratory search tasks ask the observer to find and/or identify a target item among some number of distractor items. The core empirical fact that needs explanation is that some search tasks are easy and others are difficult (see Fig. 1). We assume that, if we could successfully describe the rules that govern human search behavior, we would be able to improve performance in critical applied search tasks and to offer suggestions to those trying to build machines that might do our search tasks for us. Visual search is also an experimentally tractable way to study selective attention, and it is increasingly clear that any useful theory of visual perception will require an understanding of the role of attention.Treisman's feature integration theory Visual search and the role of attention in search has been much discussed in recent literature (see [1][2][3][4][5] for reviews). This article will concentrate on several issues growing out of Anne Treisman's seminal Feature Integration Theory (FIT) [6]. It would be a great disservice to many other researchers to label FIT as the sole 'big bang' of the visual search universe. However, it does serve well as an organizing principle for a brief review of some interesting and long-running controversies.The original FIT proposed that visual search tasks could be dichotomized into 'preattentive' and 'attentive' categories. Preattentive processing was held to occur in parallel across most or all of the visual field in a single step and to be limited to a small set of basic features like color, size, motion, and orientation. Thus, you could preattentively find a red item among green. Operationally, preattentive search for a target defined by a single basic feature would produce reaction times (RTs) independent of the number of items in the display (set size). Thus, the slope of the function relating RT to set size would be near zero. Other tasks, like a search for a randomly oriented 'T' among 'L's could not be performed preattentively. Attentive processing was presumed to marshal the more extensive perceptual capabilities required to 'bind' features ...

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The role of categorization in visual search for orientation.

Cited by 238 publications

References 41 publications

Feature analysis and the role of similarity in preattentive vision

Feature analysis and the role of similarity in preattentive vision

Cross-modal associations between vision, touch, and audition influence visual search through top-down attention, not bottom-up capture

Moving towards solutions to some enduring controversies in visual search

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