@article{ref1,
title="Visual search for arbitrary objects in real scenes",
journal="Attention, perception and psychophysics",
year="2011",
author="Wolfe, Jeremy M. and Alvarez, George A. and Rosenholtz, Ruth and Kuzmova, Yoana I. and Sherman, Ashley M.",
volume="73",
number="6",
pages="1650-1671",
abstract="How efficient is visual search in real scenes? In searches for targets among arrays of randomly placed distractors, efficiency is often indexed by the slope of the reaction time (RT) × Set Size function. However, it may be impossible to define set size for real scenes. As an approximation, we hand-labeled 100 indoor scenes and used the number of labeled regions as a surrogate for set size. In Experiment 1, observers searched for named objects (a chair, bowl, etc.). With set size defined as the number of labeled regions, search was very efficient (~5 ms/item). When we controlled for a possible guessing strategy in Experiment 2, slopes increased somewhat (~15 ms/item), but they were much shallower than search for a random object among other distinctive objects outside of a scene setting (Exp. 3: ~40 ms/item). In Experiments 4-6, observers searched repeatedly through the same scene for different objects. Increased familiarity with scenes had modest effects on RTs, while repetition of target items had large effects (>500 ms). We propose that visual search in scenes is efficient because scene-specific forms of attentional guidance can eliminate most regions from the &quot;functional set size&quot; of items that could possibly be the target.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1943-3921",
doi="10.3758/s13414-011-0153-3",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-011-0153-3"
}