Visual search along the colour dimension.

• DOI: 10.1037/h0084207
• Publication Date: 2007-06-16T12:15:51Z
• Authors: Giampaolo Moraglia; Kevin P. Maloney; Eva M. Fekete; Katharina Al-Basi
• Keywords: Similarity (geometry); Visual Search

Subjects searched for a chromatic target among coloured background items. With low target-background similarity, response latencies remained uniformly short whether the was present or not and items were chromatically homogeneous not. Latencies increased with increases in similarity longest heterogeneous backgrounds, which effects of trial also became manifest. We employed Treisman's model visual search to account these findings. In particular, we suggest that forced shift from preattentive an attentive search, latter being importantly shaped by background's level variance.