Object Guidance in Visual Search — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Object Guidance in Visual Search

Name: Jeroen Pham
Major: Neuroscience
Hometown: Sturtevant, WI
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Independent research

Abstract

As individuals search for objects during visual search, their attention is guided by the features of the object they are looking for. For example: when searching for an orange, attention is biased to objects in the environment that are round, small, and orange. This attentional guidance is accomplished via a mental representation, aka search template, in visual working memory. A popular debate in this field is whether the features of the template are bound together, as in object guidance, or not, as in feature guidance. Current evidence suggests that feature guidance occurs during the first 250ms of search. The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree to which the shift from a diffuse attentional window to a focused attentional window modulates the shift from feature-based to object-based guidance.

Ten participants searched for two simple targets (e.g. a blue square and green triangle) among distractors that either shared a single feature with one of the targets (a blue circle) or was an incorrect conjunction of both target features (blue triangle). The attentional window was manipulated in two separate blocks of trials. An interaction between attention type and distractor type was found that suggested searchers may use object guidance when they have focused attention. More data is currently being collected with eye tracking technology to further investigate these results.

Poster file