Abstract
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1858-1872 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 11 |
Early online date | 25 Jul 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2016 |
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Keywords
- visual search
- optimality
- blindsight
- hemianopia
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Inefficient search strategies in simulated hemianopia. / Nowakowska, Anna; Clarke, Alasdair D. F.; Sahraie, Arash; Hunt, Amelia R.
In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Vol. 42, No. 11, 11.2016, p. 1858-1872.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Inefficient search strategies in simulated hemianopia
AU - Nowakowska, Anna
AU - Clarke, Alasdair D. F.
AU - Sahraie, Arash
AU - Hunt, Amelia R
N1 - Acknowledgements Anna Nowakowska is supported by an ESRC doctoral studentship. A James S McDonnell scholar award to Amelia R. Hunt also provided financial support. We are grateful to Edvinas Pilipavicius and Juraj Sikra for data collection. We also wish to thank W. Joseph MacInnes for help with programming the experiment and Paul Hibbard for help with filtering the faces.
PY - 2016/11
Y1 - 2016/11
N2 - We investigated whether healthy participants can spontaneously adopt effective eye movement strategies to compensate for information loss similar to that experienced by patients with damage to visual cortex (hemianopia). Visual information in one hemifield was removed or degraded while participants searched for an emotional face among neutral faces or a line tilted 45° to the right among lines of varying degree of tilt. A bias to direct saccades towards the sighted field was observed across all four experiments. The proportion of saccades directed towards the “blind” field increased with the amount of information available in that field, suggesting fixations are driven towards salient visual stimuli rather than towards locations that maximize information gain. In Experiments 1 and 2, the sighted-field bias had a minimal impact on search efficiency, because the target was difficult to find. However, the sighted-field bias persisted even when the target was visually distinct from the distractors and could easily be detected in the periphery (Experiments 3 and 4). This surprisingly inefficient search behaviour suggests that eye movements are biased to salient visual stimuli even when it comes at a clear cost to search efficiency, and efficient strategies to compensate for visual deficits are not spontaneously adopted by healthy participants.
AB - We investigated whether healthy participants can spontaneously adopt effective eye movement strategies to compensate for information loss similar to that experienced by patients with damage to visual cortex (hemianopia). Visual information in one hemifield was removed or degraded while participants searched for an emotional face among neutral faces or a line tilted 45° to the right among lines of varying degree of tilt. A bias to direct saccades towards the sighted field was observed across all four experiments. The proportion of saccades directed towards the “blind” field increased with the amount of information available in that field, suggesting fixations are driven towards salient visual stimuli rather than towards locations that maximize information gain. In Experiments 1 and 2, the sighted-field bias had a minimal impact on search efficiency, because the target was difficult to find. However, the sighted-field bias persisted even when the target was visually distinct from the distractors and could easily be detected in the periphery (Experiments 3 and 4). This surprisingly inefficient search behaviour suggests that eye movements are biased to salient visual stimuli even when it comes at a clear cost to search efficiency, and efficient strategies to compensate for visual deficits are not spontaneously adopted by healthy participants.
KW - visual search
KW - optimality
KW - blindsight
KW - hemianopia
U2 - 10.1037/xhp0000250
DO - 10.1037/xhp0000250
M3 - Article
VL - 42
SP - 1858
EP - 1872
JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
SN - 0096-1523
IS - 11
ER -