Rapid resumption of interrupted search is independent of age-related improvements in visual search

Interruption in visual search: a systematic review

Visual search, the process of trying to find a target presented among distractors, is a much-studied cognitive task. Less well-studied is the condition in which the search task is interrupted before the target is found. The consequences of such interruptions in visual search have been investigated across various disciplines, which has resulted in diverse and at times contradictory findings. The aim of this systematic review is to provide a more cohesive understanding of the effects of interruptions in visual search. For this purpose, we identified 28 studies that met our inclusion criteria. To facilitate a more organized and comprehensive analysis, we grouped the studies based on three dimensions: the search environment, the interruption aftermath, and the type of the interrupting event. While interruptions in visual search are variable and manifest differently across studies, our review provides a foundational scheme for a more cohesive understanding of the subject. This categorization serves as a starting point for exploring potential future directions, which we delineate in our conclusions.

Age-related changes in visual lobe shape characteristics and their relationship to visual search performance

Visual lobe shape plays an important role in visual search performance, but little is known about the age-related changes in visual lobe shape. The age-related changes in visual lobe shape characteristics and their relationships to visual search performance were investigated in this study. A total of 96 participants aged 15-64 years participated in this study. Their visual lobes were mapped on a uniform 2-D test field composed of 24 regularly spaced meridians passing through the centre of the visual field, and their search performances were also measured. The results showed that in general, age significantly affected visual lobe size, visual lobe shape and search time. As age increased, the visual lobe size decreased; in addition, the roundness, boundary smoothness, symmetry and regularity of the visual lobe deteriorated, and the search time increased. Moreover, significant correlations between visual lobe shape, search time and age were found. Regression analyses indicated that age was important in determining visual lobe shape and search time, suggesting that age differences should be considered when predicting search time and when designing tasks and products that involve visual search in our daily lives and work.

PRACTITIONER SUMMARY

Age-related changes in visual lobe shape characteristics and their relationships to visual search performance were investigated in this study. The results help to explain how tasks and products involving visual search in our daily lives and work should be designed for target audiences of different ages.

A default Bayesian hypothesis test for correlations and partial correlations

We propose a default Bayesian hypothesis test for the presence of a correlation or a partial correlation. The test is a direct application of Bayesian techniques for variable selection in regression models. The test is easy to apply and yields practical advantages that the standard frequentist tests lack; in particular, the Bayesian test can quantify evidence in favor of the null hypothesis and allows researchers to monitor the test results as the data come in. We illustrate the use of the Bayesian correlation test with three examples from the psychological literature. Computer code and example data are provided in the journal archives.

Cross-cultural differences in cognitive development: attention to relations and objects

Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool children in the two cultures. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds from the two cultures (N=64) participated in a relational match-to-standard task in two conditions, with simple or richly detailed objects, in which a focus on individual objects may hurt performance. Rich objects, consistent with past research, strongly limited the performance of U.S. children but not Japanese children. In Experiment 2, U.S. and Japanese 4-year-olds (N=72) participated in a visual search task that required them to find a specific object in a cluttered, but organized as a scene, visual field in which object-centric attention might be expected to aid performance and relational attentional pattern may hinder the performance because of relational structure that was poised by the scene. U.S. children outperformed Japanese children. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds from both cultures (N=36) participated in a visual search task that was similar to Experiment 2 but with randomly placed objects, where there should not be a difference between the performance of two cultures because the relational structure that may be posed by the scene is eliminated. This double-dissociation is discussed in terms of implications for different developmental trajectories, with different developmental subtasks in the two cultures.