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Target templates: the precision of mental representations affects attentional guidance and decision-making in visual search

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Abstract

When people look for things in the environment, they use target templates—mental representations of the objects they are attempting to locate—to guide attention and to assess incoming visual input as potential targets. However, unlike laboratory participants, searchers in the real world rarely have perfect knowledge regarding the potential appearance of targets. In seven experiments, we examined how the precision of target templates affects the ability to conduct visual search. Specifically, we degraded template precision in two ways: 1) by contaminating searchers’ templates with inaccurate features, and 2) by introducing extraneous features to the template that were unhelpful. We recorded eye movements to allow inferences regarding the relative extents to which attentional guidance and decision-making are hindered by template imprecision. Our findings support a dual-function theory of the target template and highlight the importance of examining template precision in visual search.

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Notes

  1. We also examined “time to fixate” the target as a measure of scanning behavior in each of the eye-tracking studies (e.g., Castelhano, Pollatsek, & Cave, 2008). The results were entirely consistent with the findings from scan-path ratios. We therefore chose to report SPRs, owing to their straightforward interpretation; specifically, that a SPR of 1.0 indicates perfect attentional guidance.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NIH grant 1 R01 HD075800-01 to Stephen D. Goldinger. We thank Kyle J. Brady for assistance in multidimensional scaling data analysis, and Alexi Rentzis, Lindsey Edgerton, Shelby Doyle, Taylor Thorn, Christina Molidor, Sarah Fialko, Mandana Minai, Deanna Masci, and Taylor Coopman for assistance in data collection. We also thank Carrick Williams and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, P.O. Box 30001 / MSC 3452, Las Cruces, NM, 88003, USA

    Michael C. Hout

  2. Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 871104, Tempe, 85287, AZ, USA

    Stephen D. Goldinger

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  1. Michael C. Hout
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  2. Stephen D. Goldinger
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Correspondence to Michael C. Hout.

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Hout, M.C., Goldinger, S.D. Target templates: the precision of mental representations affects attentional guidance and decision-making in visual search. Atten Percept Psychophys 77, 128–149 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0764-6

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