Abstract
We examined whether search is guided to novel distractors. In Experiment 1, subjects searched for a target among one new and a variable number of old distractors. Search displays in Experiment 2 consisted of an equal number of new, old, and familiar distractors (the latter repeated occasionally). We found that eye movements were preferentially directed to a new distractor on target-absent trials and that subjects tended to immediately fixate a new distractor after leaving the target on target-present trials. In both cases, first fixations on old distractors were consistently less frequent than could be explained by chance. We interpret these patterns as evidence for negative guidance: Subjects learn the visual features associated with the set of old distractors and then guide their search away from these features, ultimately resulting in the preferential fixation of novel distractors.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ariga, A., & Kawahara, J.-I. (2004). The perceptual and cognitive distractor-previewing effect. Journal of Vision, 4, 891–903. doi:10.1167/4.10.5
Bundesen, C. (1990). A theory of visual attention. Psychological Review, 97, 523–547. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.97.4.523
Chen, X., & Zelinsky, G. J. (2006). Real-world visual search is dominated by top-down guidance. Vision Research, 46, 4118–4133. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2006.08.008
Christie, J., & Klein, R. [M.] (1995). Familiarity and attention: Does what we know affect what we notice? Memory & Cognition, 23, 547–550.
Christie, J., & Klein, R. M. (1996). Assessing the evidence for novel popout. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125, 201–207. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.125.2.201
Chun, M. M., & Jiang, Y. (1998). Contextual cueing: Implicit learning and memory of visual context guides spatial attention. Cognitive Psychology, 36, 28–71. doi:10.1006/cogp.1998.0681
Chun, M. M., & Jiang, Y. (1999). Top-down attentional guidance based on implicit learning of visual covariation. Psychological Science, 10, 360–365. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00168
Cockrill, P. (2001). The teddy bear encyclopedia. New York: DK Publishing.
Desimone, R., & Duncan, J. (1995). Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 18, 193–222. doi:10.1146/annurev.ne.18.030195.001205
Diliberto, K. A., Altarriba, J., & Neill, W. T. (2000). Novel popout and familiar popout in a brightness discrimination task. Perception & Psychophysics, 62, 1494–1500.
Downing, P. E., & Dodds, C. M. (2004). Competition in visual working memory for control of search. Visual Cognition, 11, 689–703. doi:10.1080/13506280344000446
Duncan, J., & Humphreys, G. W. (1989). Visual search and stimulus similarity. Psychological Review, 96, 433–458. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.96.3.433
Findlay, J. M., Brown, V., & Gilchrist, I. D. (2001). Saccade target selection in visual search: The effect of information from the previous fixation. Vision Research, 41, 87–95. doi:10.1016/S0042-6989(00)00236-4
Geyer, T., Müller, H. J., & Krummenacher, J. (2006). Cross-trial priming in visual search for singleton conjunction targets: Role of repeated target and distractor features. Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 736–749.
Gibbons, H., Rammsayer, T. H., & Lubow, R. E. (2001). Latent inhibition depends on inhibitory attentional learning to the preexposed stimulus: Evidence from visual search and rule-learning tasks. Learning & Motivation, 32, 457–476. doi:10.1006/lmot.2001.1093
Greene, H. H., & Rayner, K. (2001). Eye movements and familiarity effects in visual search. Vision Research, 41, 3763–3773. doi:10.1016/ S0042-6989(01)00154-7
Houtkamp, R., & Roelfsema, P. R. (2006). The effect of items in working memory on the deployment of attention and the eyes during visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 32, 423–442. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.32.2.423
Itti, L., & Baldi, P. (2006). Bayesian surprise attracts human attention. In Y. Weiss, B. Schölkopf, & J. Platt (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems (Vol. 18, pp. 547–554). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Itti, L., & Koch, C. (2000). A saliency-based search mechanism for overt and covert shifts of visual attention. Vision Research, 40, 1489–1506. doi:10.1016/S0042-6989(99)00163-7
Johnston, W. A., Hawley, K. J., Plewe, S. H., Elliott, J. M. G., & DeWitt, M. J. (1990). Attention capture by novel stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119, 397–411. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.119.4.397
Kristjánsson, Á. (2006). Rapid learning in attention shifts: A review. Visual Cognition, 13, 324–362. doi:10.1080/13506280544000039
Kristjánsson, Á., & Driver, J. (2008). Priming in visual search: Separating the effects of target repetition, distractor repetition, and role-reversal. Vision Research, 48, 1217–1232. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2008.02.007
Kunar, M. A., Flusberg, S. [J.], Horowitz, T. S., & Wolfe, J. M. (2007). Does contextual cuing guide the deployment of attention? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 33, 816–828. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.33.4.816
Levin, D. T., Takarae, Y., Miner, A. G., & Keil, F. (2001). Efficient visual search by category: Specifying the features that mark the difference between artifacts and animals in preattentive vision. Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 676–697.
Lleras, A., Kawahara, J.-I., Wan, X. I., & Ariga, A. (2008). Intertrial inhibition of focused attention in pop-out search. Perception & Psychophysics, 70, 114–131. doi:10.3758/PP.70.1.114
Lubow, R. E., & Kaplan, O. (1997). Visual search as a function of type of prior experience with target and distractor. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 23, 14–24. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.23.1.14
Malinowski, P., & Hübner, R. (2001). The effect of familiarity on visual-search performance: Evidence for learned basic features. Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 458–463.
Morgan, H. M., Paul, M. A., & Tipper, S. P. (2005). Inhibition of return can be associated with object identity but not with object category. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17, 499–520. doi:10.1080/09541440440000186
Motter, B. C., & Belky, E. J. (1998). The guidance of eye movements during active visual search. Vision Research, 38, 1805–1815. doi:10.1016/S0042-6989(97)00349-0
Mruczek, R. E. B., & Sheinberg, D. L. (2005). Distractor familiarity leads to more efficient visual search for complex stimuli. Perception & Psychophysics, 67, 1016–1031.
Neider, M. B., & Zelinsky, G. J. (2008). Exploring set size effects in scenes: Identifying the objects of search. Visual Cognition, 16, 1–10. doi:10.1080/13506280701381691
Pomplun, M. (2006). Saccadic selectivity in complex visual search displays. Vision Research, 46, 1886–1900. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2005.12.003
Rutishauser, U., & Koch, C. (2007). Probabilistic modeling of eye movement data during conjunction search via feature-based attention. Journal of Vision, 7(6, Art. 5), 1–20. doi:10.1167/7.6.5
Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: I. Detection, search, and attention. Psychological Review, 84, 1–66. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.84.1.1
Shen, J., & Reingold, E. M. (2001). Visual search asymmetry: The influence of stimulus familiarity and low-level features. Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 464–475.
Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending, and a general theory. Psychological Review, 84, 127–190. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.127
Soto, D., Heinke, D., Humphreys, G. W., & Blanco, M. J. (2005). Early, involuntary top-down guidance of attention from working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 31, 248–261. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.31.2.248
Tatler, B. W., Baddeley, R. J., & Gilchrist, I. D. (2005). Visual correlates of fixation selection: Effects of scale and time. Vision Research, 45, 643–659. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2004.09.017
Tipper, S. P., Grison, S., & Kessler, K. (2003). Long-term inhibition of return of attention. Psychological Science, 14, 19–25. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.01413
Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97–136. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5
Wang, Q., Cavanagh, P., & Green, M. (1994). Familiarity and pop-out in visual search. Perception & Psychophysics, 56, 495–500.
Williams, D. E., & Reingold, E. M. (2001). Preattentive guidance of eye movements during triple conjunction search tasks: The effects of feature discriminability and saccadic amplitude. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 476–488.
Williams, L. G. (1966). The effect of target specification on objects fixated during visual search. Perception & Psychophysics, 1, 315–318.
Wolfe, J. M. (1994). Guided Search 2.0: A revised model of visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1, 202–238.
Wolfe, J. M., Butcher, S. J., Lee, C., & Hyle, M. (2003). Changing your mind: On the contributions of top-down and bottom-up guidance in visual search for feature singletons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 29, 483–502. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.29.2.483
Wolfe, J. M., Cave, K. R., & Franzel, S. L. (1989). Guided search: An alternative to the feature integration model for visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 15, 419–433. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.15.3.419
Wolfe, J. M., Horowitz, T. S., Kenner, N., Hyle, M., & Vasan, N. (2004). How fast can you change your mind? The speed of topdown guidance in visual search. Vision Research, 44, 1411–1426. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2003.11.024
Woodman, G. F., & Luck, S. J. (2007). Do the contents of visual working memory automatically influence attentional selection during visual search? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 33, 363–377. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.33.2.363
Yang, H., & Zelinsky, G. J. (2006). Evidence for guidance in categorical visual search [Abstract]. Journal of Vision, 6(6), 449a. doi:10.1167/6.6.449
Zeki, S. M. (1978). Uniformity and diversity of structure and function in rhesus monkey prestriate visual cortex. Journal of Physiology, 277, 273–290.
Zelinsky, G. J. (1996). Using eye saccades to assess the selectivity of search movements. Vision Research, 36, 2177–2187. doi:10.1016/0042-6989(95)00300-2
Zelinsky, G. J. (2008). A theory of eye movements during target acquisition. Psychological Review, 115, 787–835. doi:10.1037/a0013118
Zelinsky, G. J., Rao, R. P. N., Hayhoe, M. M., & Ballard, D. H. (1997). Eye movements reveal the spatiotemporal dynamics of visual search. Psychological Science, 8, 448–453. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00459.x
Zelinsky, G. J., & Sheinberg, D. L. (1995). Why some search tasks take longer than others: Using eye movements to redefine reaction times. In J. M. Findlay, R. Walker, & R. W. Kentridge (Eds.), Eye movement research: Mechanisms, processes and applications (pp. 325–336). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Zelinsky, G. J., & Sheinberg, D. L. (1997). Eye movements during parallel-serial visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 23, 244–262. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.23.1.244
Zelinsky, G. [J.], Zhang, W., & Samaras, D. (2008). Eye can read your mind: Decoding eye movements to reveal the targets of categorical search tasks [Abstract]. Journal of Vision, 8(6), 380a. doi:10.1167/8.6.380
Zelinsky, G. [J.], Zhang, W., Yu, B., Chen, X., & Samaras, D. (2006). The role of top-down and bottom-up processes in guiding eye movements during visual search. In Y. Weiss, B. Schölkopf, & J. Platt (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems (Vol. 18, pp. 1569–1576). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Zhang, W., Yang, H., Samaras, D., & Zelinsky, G. [J.] (2006). A computational model of eye movements during object class detection. In Y. Weiss, B. Schölkopf, & J. Platt (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems (Vol. 18, pp. 1609–1616). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant R01 MH63748 and National Science Foundation Grant IIS-0527585 to G.J.Z.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yang, H., Chen, X. & Zelinsky, G.J. A new look at novelty effects: Guiding search away from old distractors. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 71, 554–564 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/APP.71.3.554
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/APP.71.3.554