Cooper, RM, Law, AS and Langton, SRH (2013) Looking back at the stare-in-the-crowd effect: Staring eyes do not capture attention in visual search. Journal of Vision, 13 (6). pp. 1-22. ISSN 1534-7362

Preview

Text Cooper et al 2013 accepted.pdf - Accepted Version Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

The stare-in-the crowd effect refers to the finding that a visual search for a target of staring eyes among averted eyes distracters is more efficient than the search for an averted-eyes target among staring distracters. This finding could indicate that staring eyes are prioritized in the processing of the search array so that attention is more likely to be directed to their location than to any other. However, visual search is a complex process, which not only depends upon the properties of the target, but also the similarity between the target of the search and the distractor items and between the distractor items themselves. Across five experiments, we show that the search asymmetry diagnostic of the stare in-the-crowd effect is more likely to be the result of a failure to control for the similarity among distracting items between the two critical search conditions rather than any special attention-grabbing property of staring gazes. Our results suggest that, contrary to results reported in the literature, staring gazes are not prioritized by attention in visual search.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	11 Medical And Health Sciences, 17 Psychology And Cognitive Sciences
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Divisions:	Natural Sciences & Psychology (closed 31 Aug 19)
Publisher:	Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
Related URLs:	Author
Date Deposited:	22 May 2015 14:10
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 14:21
DOI or ID number:	10.1167/13.6.10
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/1162

View Item