Rachael Barnes
February 7th, 2016
Dr. Queen
Visual Search Lab
Introduction
Jeremy Wolfe is a psychologist who was particularly interested studying visual attention and visual search. The term “visual search” is used to describe the action of using one’s visual modality to identify an object given to you. Wolfe (2011) posed the question “how you find what you are looking for in a visual world filled with these things that you are not looking for?” (p.1). When it comes to visual search we struggle to find objects that are right in front of our eyes. This becomes a problem when people are tasked with important jobs requiring them to identify potential dangers directly in front of them. As Wolfe (2011) pointed out detecting cancer signs and …show more content…
In order to participate students had to set aside approximately 20 minutes of their time, have a laptop at a desk, and have no disruptions or distractions. The participants were instructed to visit the website www.gocognitive.net and participate in a visual search demonstration. The participants practiced in a trial run of the visual search to familiarize themselves before launching the actual demonstration. The task at hand was to find the blue triangle and press certain keys on the computer to indicate whether or not the blue triangle was present on the screen and to move on to the next trial. The “/” key on the keyboard was used to say that the blue triangle was present and the “z” key to say the blue triangle was not present. The participants had to find the blue triangle among red and blue squares and red triangles. The number of triangles and squares varied from 4, 8, 16, and 32 distractions. The demonstration measured the reaction time for each trial. There were a total of 144 trials where 72 were feature search trials and another 72 conjunction search …show more content…
The data in Figure 1 supports the hypothesis that the number of items present would affect the reaction time of conjunction searches more than feature searches. The purpose of this lab was to determine whether or not ones reaction time differs in relation to what type of visual search one is performing and how it is affected by the number of distracting items. After conducting the simulation, we were able to support both of our hypothesis that conjunction searches require more cognitive effort and even more effort when there are more items present. The more cognitive effort the longer the reaction time. This may not seem like a “matter of life and death” but as Wolfe pointed out, when it comes to jobs involving visual searches they are extremely important and they are “very visual demanding jobs” (Wolfe, 2011, p. 2). Wolfe used the examples of air travel safety and detection of cancerous signs to illustrate just how careful these visual searches can
February 7th, 2016
Dr. Queen
Visual Search Lab
Introduction
Jeremy Wolfe is a psychologist who was particularly interested studying visual attention and visual search. The term “visual search” is used to describe the action of using one’s visual modality to identify an object given to you. Wolfe (2011) posed the question “how you find what you are looking for in a visual world filled with these things that you are not looking for?” (p.1). When it comes to visual search we struggle to find objects that are right in front of our eyes. This becomes a problem when people are tasked with important jobs requiring them to identify potential dangers directly in front of them. As Wolfe (2011) pointed out detecting cancer signs and …show more content…
In order to participate students had to set aside approximately 20 minutes of their time, have a laptop at a desk, and have no disruptions or distractions. The participants were instructed to visit the website www.gocognitive.net and participate in a visual search demonstration. The participants practiced in a trial run of the visual search to familiarize themselves before launching the actual demonstration. The task at hand was to find the blue triangle and press certain keys on the computer to indicate whether or not the blue triangle was present on the screen and to move on to the next trial. The “/” key on the keyboard was used to say that the blue triangle was present and the “z” key to say the blue triangle was not present. The participants had to find the blue triangle among red and blue squares and red triangles. The number of triangles and squares varied from 4, 8, 16, and 32 distractions. The demonstration measured the reaction time for each trial. There were a total of 144 trials where 72 were feature search trials and another 72 conjunction search …show more content…
The data in Figure 1 supports the hypothesis that the number of items present would affect the reaction time of conjunction searches more than feature searches. The purpose of this lab was to determine whether or not ones reaction time differs in relation to what type of visual search one is performing and how it is affected by the number of distracting items. After conducting the simulation, we were able to support both of our hypothesis that conjunction searches require more cognitive effort and even more effort when there are more items present. The more cognitive effort the longer the reaction time. This may not seem like a “matter of life and death” but as Wolfe pointed out, when it comes to jobs involving visual searches they are extremely important and they are “very visual demanding jobs” (Wolfe, 2011, p. 2). Wolfe used the examples of air travel safety and detection of cancerous signs to illustrate just how careful these visual searches can