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Five factors that guide attention in visual search

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremy M. Wolfe

    (Visual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women's Hospital)

  • Todd S. Horowitz

    (Basic Biobehavioral and Psychological Sciences Branch, Behavioral Research Program, National Cancer Institute)

Abstract

How do we find what we are looking for? Even when the desired target is in the current field of view, we need to search because fundamental limits on visual processing make it impossible to recognize everything at once. Searching involves directing attention to objects that might be the target. This deployment of attention is not random. It is guided to the most promising items and locations by five factors discussed here: bottom-up salience, top-down feature guidance, scene structure and meaning, the previous history of search over timescales ranging from milliseconds to years, and the relative value of the targets and distractors. Modern theories of visual search need to incorporate all five factors and specify how these factors combine to shape search behaviour. An understanding of the rules of guidance can be used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of socially important search tasks, from security screening to medical image perception.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy M. Wolfe & Todd S. Horowitz, 2017. "Five factors that guide attention in visual search," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 1(3), pages 1-8, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:1:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1038_s41562-017-0058
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0058
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Teppo Felin & Stuart Kauffman & Todd Zenger, 2023. "Resource origins and search," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(6), pages 1514-1533, June.
    2. Devdeepta Bose & Henning Cordes & Sven Nolte & Judith Christiane Schneider & Colin Farrell Camerer, 2022. "Decision Weights for Experimental Asset Prices Based on Visual Salience," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(11), pages 5094-5126.
    3. Frank van der Horst & Jelle Miedema & Joshua Snell & Jan Theeuwes, 2020. "Banknote verification relies on vision, feel and a single second," Working Papers 680, DNB.
    4. Anna S. Gracheva & Ekaterina O. Ivanina & Yuri A. Markov & Elena S. Gorbunova, 2018. "Search for familiar and dangerous: not seeing gopnik in the crowd," HSE Working papers WP BRP 96/PSY/2018, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    5. Joseph W. MacInnes & Roopali Bhatnagar, 2017. "Where Does Attention Go When Facilitation is Absent?," HSE Working papers WP BRP 85/PSY/2017, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    6. Frank van der Horst & Joshua Snell & Jan Theeuwes, 2021. "Enhancing banknote authentication by guiding attention to security features and prevalence expectancy," Working Papers 716, DNB.
    7. Maxim A. Ulanov & Yury Y. Shtyrov & Tatiana A. Stroganova, 2017. "Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation as a Tool to Induce Language Recovery in Patients with Post-Stroke Aphasia: An Overview of Studies," HSE Working papers WP BRP 86/PSY/2017, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    8. Yuki Harada & Junji Ohyama, 2020. "The effect of task-irrelevant spatial contexts on 360-degree attention," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-14, August.

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