| Description |
Visual search is a task we perform every day and very frequently, and as a result, visual search has been extensively studied. Most investigations on visual search, however, use highly artificial stimuli and tasks. We designed a real-world search task to investigate one theory within the visual search literature. Here, we investigate how the type of target search influences the quality of what we remember from the search. We randomly assigned participants either to search for the same target over multiple trials (consistent), or to search for a new target on each trial (variable). Following 16 search trials, we gave participants a surprise memory test. They were tested on whether they recognized nontarget objects (distractors) from the environments, and how well they could correctly recall the location of those objects. We observed that the longer participants looked at a distractor during search, the more likely they were to correctly recognize that distractor when tested. Additionally, we used d' to test memory and found there was a significant difference between the two target conditions. When participants were searching for a new target on each trial, they were better at remembering the environments. Results in search time also support prior work showing differences in the engagement of working memory between the two conditions. Overall, the results from this study support the target template theory; however, further work is needed in order to understand the nature of our differences from the established literature. |
