Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Center of Excellence for Rehabilitation Medicine, UMC Utrecht Brain Center, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands.
J Vis. 2023 Jul 3;23(7):14. doi: 10.1167/jov.23.7.14.
Visual search is typically studied by requiring participants to memorize a template initially, for which they subsequently search in a crowded display. Search in daily life, however, often involves templates that remain accessible externally, and may therefore be (re)attended for just-in-time encoding or to refresh internal template representations. Here, we show that participants indeed use external templates during search when given the chance. This behavior was observed during both simple and complex search, scaled with task difficulty, and was associated with improved performance. Furthermore, we show that participants used external sampling not only to offload memory, but also as a means of verifying whether the template was remembered correctly at the end of trials. We conclude that the external world may not only provide the challenge (e.g., distractors), but may dynamically ease search. These results argue for extensions of state-of-the-art models of search, because external sampling seems to be used frequently, in at least two ways and is actually beneficial for task performance. Our findings support a model of visual working memory that emphasizes a resource-efficient trade-off between storing and (re)attending external information.
视觉搜索通常通过要求参与者最初记住模板来进行研究，然后他们在拥挤的显示中进行搜索。然而，日常生活中的搜索通常涉及外部可访问的模板，因此可能会（重新）关注以进行即时编码或刷新内部模板表示。在这里，我们表明，当有机会时，参与者确实在搜索过程中使用外部模板。这种行为在简单和复杂的搜索中都观察到，与任务难度成正比，并且与性能的提高有关。此外，我们还表明，参与者不仅使用外部采样来减轻记忆负担，而且还将其用作在试验结束时验证模板是否正确记住的一种手段。我们的结论是，外部世界不仅可以提供挑战（例如，干扰物），而且可以动态地减轻搜索的难度。这些结果为搜索的最先进模型的扩展提供了依据，因为外部采样似乎经常被使用，至少有两种方式，并且实际上对任务性能有益。我们的研究结果支持了一种视觉工作记忆模型，该模型强调了在存储和（重新）关注外部信息之间进行资源高效权衡的重要性。
