Human Visual Search Does Not Maximize the Post-Saccadic Probability of Identifying Targets

View/ Open
Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.100234Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Morvan, Camille, and Laurence T. Maloney. 2012. Human Visual Search Does Not Maximize the Post-Saccadic Probability of Identifying Targets. PLoS Computational Biology 8(2): e1002342.Abstract
Researchers have conjectured that eye movements during visual search are selected to minimize the number of saccades. The optimal Bayesian eye movement strategy minimizing saccades does not simply direct the eye to whichever location is judged most likely to contain the target but makes use of the entire retina as an information gathering device during each fixation. Here we show that human observers do not minimize the expected number of saccades in planning saccades in a simple visual search task composed of three tokens. In this task, the optimal eye movement strategy varied, depending on the spacing between tokens (in the first experiment) or the size of tokens (in the second experiment), and changed abruptly once the separation or size surpassed a critical value. None of our observers changed strategy as a function of separation or size. Human performance fell far short of ideal, both qualitatively and quantitatively.Other Sources
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3271024/pdf/Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAACitable link to this page
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11208936
Collections
- FAS Scholarly Articles [17559]
Contact administrator regarding this item (to report mistakes or request changes)