Rummage search by expert dyads, novice dyads and novice individuals for objects hidden in houses

ABSTRACT

Rummage search is the visual and haptic search of complex environments for targets. In this study, rummage search was explored using a novel analytic framework with expert dyads and novice dyads, as well as novice individuals. Participants sought an unknown number of targets placed in four rooms of a residential house. Some targets were plainly visible whereas others were hidden and could only be found through haptic examination. Expert dyads were very good at the task, conducting a slowed, double-checking exhaustive search, while novices both failed to fixate potential target locations and failed to carry out the appropriate action required to search those locations exhaustively. The novice dyads examined more than the novice individuals, but became more superficial in their search. We conclude that effective rummage searching is a skill enhanced by training.

KEYWORDS:

• Rummage search
• visual search
• eye movements
• teamwork
• expertise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Charlotte A. Riggs http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6209-8758

Notes

1. Interestingly, an “S” shaped strategy is also commonly used in visuo-spatial cancellation tasks (Donnelly et al., 1999) where the path is determined by the order of cancellations.

2. A number of pragmatic concerns impacted the size of the participant groups. These concerns included limited access to the expert population and a fixed time limit restricting access to the experimental set-up.

3. While the basic presentation on RS was common across all participants, the naïve dyad participants were given different threat briefs (that the target spotted by an eye witness was congruent in size with the threat brief (n = 8), incongruent in size with the threat brief, i.e. the threat brief was inaccurate (n = 8) or a more general threat brief not specifying a specific target at all (n = 8)) or some additional details about rummage searching regarding possible sources of error (a form of error management training) (n = 12) or no additional details (n = 12). Statistical comparisons of performance speed, accuracy and exhaustive search, as well as underlying eye movement measures, showed that those receiving the basic information and those with minor variants differed on only one out of 16 tests. For this reason, we have collapsed participants across these minor variations to increase the statistical power of the study. Note, collapsing participant groups meant that the number of participants in the novice dyad condition was substantially larger than the other participant groups.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Defence through the Defence Human Capability Science and Technology Centre and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory under Grant DSTLX-1000080487.