Irrelevant salient distractors can trigger early quitting in visual search, causing observers to miss targets they might otherwise find. Here, we asked whether task-relevant salient cues can produce a similar early quitting effect on the subset of trials where those cues fail to highlight the target. We presented participants with a difficult…

Introduction: It has been suggested that cognitive characteristics may affect search. This study investigated how decoding abilities, short-term memory capacity and rapid automatised naming skills relate to query formulation. Method: A total of twenty dyslexic participants and twenty non-dyslexic controls completed four standardised cognitive…

Eye movements were monitored to examine search efficiency and infer how color is mentally represented to guide search for multiple targets. Observers located a single color target very efficiently by fixating colors similar to the target. However, simultaneous search for 2 colors produced a dual-target cost. In addition, as the similarity between…

Mathematicians have proven that four colors are sufficient to color 2-D maps so that no neighboring regions share the same color. Here we consider the psychological 4-color problem: Identifying which 4 colors should be used to make a map easy to use. We build a model of visual search for this design task and demonstrate how to apply it to the task…

How does past experience influence visual search strategy (i.e., attentional set)? Recent reports have shown that, when given the option to use 1 of 2 attentional sets, observers persist with the set previously required in a training phase. Here, 2 related questions are addressed. First, does the training effect result only from perseveration with…

The authors report 4 experiments that examined color grouping and negative carryover effects in preview search via a probe detection task (J. J. Braithwaite, G. W. Humphreys, & J. Hodsoll, 2003). In Experiment 1, there was evidence of a negative color carryover from the preview to new items, using both search and probe detection measures. There…