Dewis Haden, Metcalf Cheryl D, Warner Martin B, Polfreman Richard, Godwin Hayward J
University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, Hampshire, SO17 1BJ, UK.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 May 12. doi: 10.3758/s13414-025-03083-w.
It is well understood that attentional selection is required to deploy visual attention to relevant objects within displays during visual search tasks. Interactive search, an extension of visual search, refers to tasks wherein an individual must manipulate items within their environment to uncover obscured information whilst searching for a target object. Here, we conducted two independent interactive search experiments where participants were asked to interact with virtual cubes to locate a target T shape embedded onto the side of one of the cubes. Our goal here was to investigate the drivers of attentional selection within interactive searches. To do so, we manipulated the effort required to rotate cubes (Experiment 1) and the quantity of shapes attached to the cubes (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that the perceived effort required to interact with an object is an extremely strong driver of attentional selection within interactive search behaviors. Here, targets may be slower to be detected when that target is obscured within or by an object that conveys, in some shape or form, greater difficulty to examine compared with other objects. These findings provide an exciting first step towards understanding the factors that influence selection during interactive searches. Data and experimental code for all experiments in this study can be accessed online via this web address: https://osf.io/2zyvf/?view_only=ae4f4f2c36ab4e6aae5da3e99fb81988 . Experiments were not preregistered.
众所周知，在视觉搜索任务中，需要进行注意力选择才能将视觉注意力部署到显示器中的相关对象上。交互式搜索是视觉搜索的扩展，指的是个体必须在其环境中操纵物品以 uncover 隐藏信息，同时搜索目标对象的任务。在这里，我们进行了两项独立的交互式搜索实验，要求参与者与虚拟立方体进行交互，以找到嵌入其中一个立方体侧面的目标 T 形。我们的目标是研究交互式搜索中注意力选择的驱动因素。为此，我们操纵了旋转立方体所需的 effort（实验 1）以及附着在立方体上的形状数量（实验 2）。我们的研究结果表明，与物体交互所需的感知 effort 是交互式搜索行为中注意力选择的一个极其强大的驱动因素。在这里，当目标被一个以某种形状或形式传达比其他物体更难检查的物体遮挡或隐藏时，可能会更难被检测到。这些发现为理解影响交互式搜索中选择的因素迈出了令人兴奋的第一步。本研究中所有实验的数据和实验代码可通过此网址在线获取：https://osf.io/2zyvf/?view_only=ae4f4f2c36ab4e6aae5da3e99fb81988 。实验未进行预注册。
