Kunar Melina A, Ariyabandu Surani, Jami Zaffran
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2016 Apr;78(3):736-41. doi: 10.3758/s13414-016-1062-2.
The efficiency of how people search for an item in visual search has, traditionally, been thought to depend on bottom-up or top-down guidance cues. However, recent research has shown that the rate at which people visually search through a display is also affected by cognitive strategies. In this study, we investigated the role of choice in visual search, by asking whether giving people a choice alters both preference for a cognitively neutral task and search behavior. Two visual search conditions were examined: one in which participants were given a choice of visual search task (the choice condition), and one in which participants did not have a choice (the no-choice condition). The results showed that the participants in the choice condition rated the task as both more enjoyable and likeable than did the participants in the no-choice condition. However, despite their preferences, actual search performance was slower and less efficient in the choice condition than in the no-choice condition (Exp. 1). Experiment 2 showed that the difference in search performance between the choice and no-choice conditions disappeared when central executive processes became occupied with a task-switching task. These data concur with a choice-impaired hypothesis of search, in which having a choice leads to more motivated, active search involving executive processes.
传统上认为，人们在视觉搜索中查找物品的效率取决于自下而上或自上而下的引导线索。然而，最近的研究表明，人们在视觉显示中进行视觉搜索的速度也受到认知策略的影响。在本研究中，我们通过询问给予人们选择是否会改变对认知中性任务的偏好和搜索行为，来探究选择在视觉搜索中的作用。我们考察了两种视觉搜索条件：一种是参与者可以选择视觉搜索任务（选择条件），另一种是参与者没有选择（无选择条件）。结果表明，与无选择条件下的参与者相比，选择条件下的参与者认为该任务更有趣且更令人喜欢。然而，尽管他们有偏好，但在选择条件下的实际搜索表现比无选择条件下更慢且效率更低（实验1）。实验2表明，当中央执行过程被任务切换任务占据时，选择条件和无选择条件之间的搜索表现差异消失。这些数据与搜索的选择受损假说一致，即拥有选择会导致更有动力、更积极的搜索，涉及执行过程。
