Savage Steven William, Potter Douglas D, Tatler Benjamin W
Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, 20 Staniford Street, 02114 Boston, MA, USA.
University of Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Vision Res. 2018 Dec;153:37-46. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2018.09.004. Epub 2018 Oct 10.
Many aspects of our everyday behaviour require that we search for objects. However, in real situations search is often conducted while internal and external factors compete for our attention resources. Cognitive distraction interferes with our ability to search for targets, increasing search times. Here we consider whether effects of cognitive distraction interfere differentially with three distinct phases of search: initiating search, overtly scanning through items in the display, and verifying that the object is indeed the target of search once it has been fixated. Furthermore, we consider whether strategic components of visual search that emerge when searching items organized into structured arrays are susceptible to cognitive distraction or not. We used Gilchrist & Harvey's (2006) structured and unstructured visual search paradigm with the addition of Savage, Potter, and Tatler's (2013) secondary puzzle task. Cognitive load influenced two phases of search: 1) scanning times and 2) verification times. Under high load, fixation durations were longer and re-fixations of distracters were more common. In terms of scanning strategy, we replicated Gilchrist and Harvey's (2006) findings of more systematic search for structured arrays than unstructured ones. We also found an effect of cognitive load on this aspect of search but only in structured arrays. Our findings suggest that our eyes, by default, produce an autonomous scanning pattern that is modulated but not completely eliminated by secondary cognitive load.
我们日常行为的许多方面都需要我们寻找物体。然而，在实际情况中，搜索往往是在内部和外部因素争夺我们的注意力资源时进行的。认知干扰会妨碍我们寻找目标的能力，从而增加搜索时间。在这里，我们考虑认知干扰的影响是否会对搜索的三个不同阶段产生不同的干扰：启动搜索、公开扫描显示中的项目，以及在物体被注视后确认它确实是搜索目标。此外，我们考虑当搜索组织成结构化阵列的项目时出现的视觉搜索的策略成分是否容易受到认知干扰。我们使用了吉尔克里斯特和哈维（2006年）的结构化和非结构化视觉搜索范式，并增加了萨维奇、波特和塔特勒（2013年）的二次拼图任务。认知负荷影响了搜索的两个阶段：1）扫描时间和2）验证时间。在高负荷下，注视持续时间更长，对干扰物的重新注视更常见。在扫描策略方面，我们重复了吉尔克里斯特和哈维（2006年）的发现，即对结构化阵列的搜索比对非结构化阵列的搜索更系统。我们还发现认知负荷对搜索的这一方面有影响，但仅在结构化阵列中。我们的研究结果表明，默认情况下，我们的眼睛会产生一种自主扫描模式，这种模式会受到二次认知负荷的调节，但不会被完全消除。
