TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2011//
TI  - Visual search for arbitrary objects in real scenes
JO  - Attention, perception and psychophysics
A1  - Wolfe, Jeremy M.
A1  - Alvarez, George A.
A1  - Rosenholtz, Ruth
A1  - Kuzmova, Yoana I.
A1  - Sherman, Ashley M.
SP  - 1650
EP  - 1671
VL  - 73
IS  - 6
N2  - 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 "functional set size" of items that could possibly be the target.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1943-3921
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-011-0153-3
ID  - ref1
ER  -