Experimental and Biological Psychology, University of Marburg, Gutenbergstraße 18, 35039, Marburg, Germany.
Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior, Marburg, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2023 Jan;85(1):23-40. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02600-5. Epub 2022 Nov 30.
To interact with one's environment, relevant objects have to be selected as targets for saccadic eye movements. Previous studies have demonstrated that factors such as visual saliency and reward influence saccade target selection, and that humans can dynamically trade off these factors to maximize expected value during visual search. However, expected value in everyday situations not only depends on saliency and reward, but also on the required time to find objects, and the likelihood of a successful object-interaction after search. Here we studied whether search costs and the accuracy to discriminate an object feature can be traded off to maximize expected value. We designed a combined visual search and perceptual discrimination task, where participants chose whether to search for an easy- or difficult-to-discriminate target in search displays populated by distractors that shared features with either the easy or the difficult target. Participants received a monetary reward for correct discriminations and were given limited time to complete as many trials as they could. We found that participants considered their discrimination performance and the search costs when choosing targets and, by this, maximized expected value. However, the accumulated reward was constrained by noise in both the choice of which target to search for, and which elements to fixate during search. We conclude that humans take into account the prospective search time and the likelihood of successful a object-interaction, when deciding what to search for. However, search performance is constrained by noise in decisions about what to search for and how to search for it.
为了与环境互动，相关物体必须被选择为眼跳的目标。先前的研究表明，视觉显著性和奖励等因素会影响眼跳目标选择，并且人类可以在视觉搜索过程中动态权衡这些因素，以最大化预期价值。然而，日常情况下的预期价值不仅取决于显著性和奖励，还取决于找到物体所需的时间，以及搜索后成功进行物体交互的可能性。在这里，我们研究了是否可以权衡搜索成本和区分物体特征的准确性，以最大化预期价值。我们设计了一个结合视觉搜索和感知辨别任务的实验，参与者需要在搜索显示中选择是搜索容易还是难以辨别目标，搜索显示中干扰项与容易或困难目标具有共同特征。参与者在正确辨别时会获得金钱奖励，并有有限的时间完成尽可能多的试次。我们发现，参与者在选择目标时会考虑他们的辨别表现和搜索成本，并通过这种方式最大化预期价值。然而，由于在选择要搜索的目标以及在搜索过程中要注视哪些元素时存在噪声，累积奖励受到限制。我们的结论是，人类在决定搜索目标时会考虑预期的搜索时间和成功进行物体交互的可能性。然而，搜索性能受到在选择要搜索的目标以及如何搜索方面的决策中的噪声的限制。
