Individual differences and metacognitive knowledge of visual search strategy

A crucial ability for an organism is to orient toward important objects and to ignore temporarily irrelevant objects. Attention provides the perceptual selectivity necessary to filter an overwhelming input of sensory information to allow for efficient object detection. Although much research has exa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2011-10, Vol.6 (10), p.e27043-e27043
Main Author: Proulx, Michael J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Attention
Attentional bias
Behavior
Biology
Blindness
Cognition - physiology
Data processing
Exploratory behavior
Eye movements
Guideline Adherence
Humans
Knowledge
Memory
Metacognition
Neurosciences
Object recognition
Search methods
Selectivity
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Target detection
Topography
Visual perception
Visual Perception - physiology
Visual task performance
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Summary:A crucial ability for an organism is to orient toward important objects and to ignore temporarily irrelevant objects. Attention provides the perceptual selectivity necessary to filter an overwhelming input of sensory information to allow for efficient object detection. Although much research has examined visual search and the 'template' of attentional set that allows for target detection, the behavior of individual subjects often reveals the limits of experimental control of attention. Few studies have examined important aspects such as individual differences and metacognitive strategies. The present study analyzes the data from two visual search experiments for a conjunctively defined target (Proulx, 2007). The data revealed attentional capture blindness, individual differences in search strategies, and a significant rate of metacognitive errors for the assessment of the strategies employed. These results highlight a challenge for visual attention studies to account for individual differences in search behavior and distractibility, and participants that do not (or are unable to) follow instructions.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0027043