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Abstract
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Summary
In Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1, the Scottish rebel, the Earl of Douglas, engages in a visual search task. He is searching for King Henry in a field full of soldiers who are not King Henry (known in the search trade as 'distractors'). The problem is that some of those soldiers are wearing the colors of the king. As his ally, Hotspur, puts it, "The king hath many marching in his coats". Douglas proposes what would be considered a serial, self-terminating search strategy for completing this task: "Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats; I'll murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece, until I meet the king". Typical searches in the lab and in everyday life are of a less sanguinary nature. Nevertheless, we can detect a variety of principles in the Earl of Douglas' search that are common to searches for a red X on a computer screen, the salt shaker on the dinner table, or a threat in an X-ray of carry-on luggage. |