Time-based selection in complex displays: Visual marking does not occur in Multi-Element Asynchronous Dynamic (MAD) search

ABSTRACT

In visual search, a preview benefit occurs when half of the distractor items (the preview set) are presented before the remaining distractor items and the target (the search set). Separating the display across time allows participants to prioritize the search set, leading to increased search efficiency. To date, such time-based selection has been examined using relatively simple types of search displays. However, recent research has shown that when displays better mimic real-world scenes by including a combination of stationary, moving and luminance-changing items (Multi-element Asynchronous Dynamic [MAD] displays), previous search principles reported in the literature no longer apply. In the current work, we examined time-base selection in MAD search conditions. Overall the findings illustrated an advantage for processing new items based on overall RTs but no advantage in terms of search rates. In the absence of a speed–accuracy trade-off no preview benefit emerged when using more complex MAD stimuli.

KEYWORDS:

• Attention
• visual search
• visual marking
• transients
• attentional capture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For this analysis, we treated the three set-sizes of the low density (4, 8, 16 items) and high density (16, 24, 32 items) conditions as equivalent levels of a single factor.