Ivy Spencer, Rohovit Taren, Stefanucci Jeanine, Stokes Dustin, Mills Megan, Drew Trafton
University of Utah, Department of Philosophy, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States.
University of Oregon, Department of Psychology, Eugene, Oregon, United States.
J Med Imaging (Bellingham). 2023 Jan;10(1):015501. doi: 10.1117/1.JMI.10.1.015501. Epub 2023 Jan 24.
One of the dominant behavioral markers of visual-expert search strategy, holistic visual processing (HVP), suggests that experts process information from a larger region of space in conjunction with a more focused gaze pattern to improve search speed and accuracy. To date, extant literature suggests that visual search expertise is domain specific, including HVP and its associated behaviors.
The current study is the first to use eye tracking to directly measure the HVP strategies of two expert groups, radiologists and architects, in comparison to one another and a novice control.
In doing so, we replicated and extended this prior research: visual expertise is domain specific. However, our eye-tracking data indicate that contrary to this prior work, HVP strategies are transferable across domains. Yet, despite the transfer of HVP strategies, there is neither reduced search time nor greater accuracy in visual search outside of an expert's domain.
Therefore, our data suggest that HVP behaviors are a particular form of visual search mechanism that, outside of an expert's native search-ecology, are not necessarily conducive to more general visual search success. It is in addition to explicit knowledge of an expert's domain, how to search, and where to search, that HVP strategies are their most effective for visual search success.
视觉专家搜索策略的主要行为标志之一，即整体视觉处理（HVP），表明专家通过结合更集中的注视模式，从更大的空间区域处理信息，以提高搜索速度和准确性。迄今为止，现有文献表明视觉搜索专业知识是特定领域的，包括HVP及其相关行为。
本研究首次使用眼动追踪技术，直接测量放射科医生和建筑师这两个专家群体的HVP策略，并将他们相互比较，同时与新手对照组进行比较。
通过这样做，我们重复并扩展了先前的研究：视觉专业知识是特定领域的。然而，我们的眼动追踪数据表明，与先前的研究结果相反，HVP策略是可以跨领域转移的。然而，尽管HVP策略可以转移，但在专家领域之外的视觉搜索中，搜索时间并没有减少，准确性也没有提高。
因此，我们的数据表明，HVP行为是一种特殊形式的视觉搜索机制，在专家的原生搜索生态之外，不一定有助于更普遍的视觉搜索成功。除了专家领域的明确知识、如何搜索以及在哪里搜索之外，HVP策略对于视觉搜索成功最为有效。
