08:30 - 10:00
Talk Session 1
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08:30 - 10:00
Mon—HZ_2—Talks1—1
Mon-Talks1
Room:
Room: HZ_2
Chair/s:
Jan Tünnermann, Iris Wiegand
Tracing a spiral: Foraging organization in weakly structured environments
Mon—HZ_2—Talks1—102
Presented by: Jan Tünnermann
Jan Tünnermann *Mia RaabAnna Schubö
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Visual foraging tasks, used to assess selective attention and search behavior, typically involve participants collecting target items from randomized arrays of targets and distractors on tablets or PC screens. While participants often optimize search paths based on various factors (attentional constraints, value, etc.), they also exhibit tendencies toward systematic search patterns (e.g., row or column-based) even through random arrangements. However, the real world is rarely random. For instance, when picking berries from a bush, one might follow the direction of a branch rather than scanning the bush in a reading direction. In this study, we examined how spatial foraging organization adapts to the presence of structure in the environment. We designed search arrays where targets and distractors were arranged in patterns that introduced weak structure, without requiring participants to utilize these patterns to locate targets. Nevertheless, our results indicate that participants adapted their spatial search strategies to these subtle environmental structures. We introduce novel metrics to quantify the extent of this adaptation, providing new insights into how weak structures in the environment influence visual search organization. These findings highlight the adaptive nature of human foraging behavior in response to environmental regularities.
Keywords: visual foraging, visual search, visual attention