Analysis Of Neisser's Visual Search Experiment
Abstract
Visual perception and search techniques within visual search tasks have been the focus of experiments since Neisser’s investigation of the ‘pop-out’ effect in the 1960’s. This study aims to investigate and develop on the concept of the ‘pop-out’ effect, with mention of the feature-integration theory which suggests there are two different stages of visual processing, namely preattentive parallel and attentive serial processing. Participants from The University of Cape Town completed Neisser’s Visual Search Experiment, in which target letters needed to be identified amongst a number of distractor items on a grid, with their reaction time (in milliseconds) being recorded. The findings supported the hypothesis that target letters that …show more content…
The large majority of the participants happened to be female. The participants were selected using convenience sampling. Convenience sampling is a non-probability sampling technique, where participants that are easily accessible and available to the researcher are used.
c) Materials and Measures
The online test – Neisser’s Visual Search Experiment - was performed by each participant on a computer, either their own or those belonging to the university. The students accessed the downloadable file through the UCT site, Vula. Once downloading the file, the test would be installed and would begin. The time taken (in seconds) to react to and find (if present) the target letters on each grid was timed by the program and presented at the end of the test. Each participant’s final time in milliseconds was then recorded on an Excel sheet.
d) …show more content…
It is clear that when faced with a visual field containing a number of items, the items that featured a unique characteristic (such as shape/curvature) were almost immediately identifiable. It is important to note “the pop-out effect only occurs if the critical feature is unique to the target” (Quinlan, 2003, p. 649). Within the experiment, the target letters that stood out from the grids on which they were presented did so due to the fact that they had a “distinctive feature” (Quinlan, 2003, p. 654), for example the letter ‘T’ (an angular letter) would pop-out on a grid of round letters such as ‘O’, ‘Q’ and ‘C’. These findings also support the past research and literature regarding the FIT (Treisman & Gelade, 2003), with target letters that are similar to the grid taking longer to process and recognize due to the fact that serial searching is require – with each item being consulted
Visual perception and search techniques within visual search tasks have been the focus of experiments since Neisser’s investigation of the ‘pop-out’ effect in the 1960’s. This study aims to investigate and develop on the concept of the ‘pop-out’ effect, with mention of the feature-integration theory which suggests there are two different stages of visual processing, namely preattentive parallel and attentive serial processing. Participants from The University of Cape Town completed Neisser’s Visual Search Experiment, in which target letters needed to be identified amongst a number of distractor items on a grid, with their reaction time (in milliseconds) being recorded. The findings supported the hypothesis that target letters that …show more content…
The large majority of the participants happened to be female. The participants were selected using convenience sampling. Convenience sampling is a non-probability sampling technique, where participants that are easily accessible and available to the researcher are used.
c) Materials and Measures
The online test – Neisser’s Visual Search Experiment - was performed by each participant on a computer, either their own or those belonging to the university. The students accessed the downloadable file through the UCT site, Vula. Once downloading the file, the test would be installed and would begin. The time taken (in seconds) to react to and find (if present) the target letters on each grid was timed by the program and presented at the end of the test. Each participant’s final time in milliseconds was then recorded on an Excel sheet.
d) …show more content…
It is clear that when faced with a visual field containing a number of items, the items that featured a unique characteristic (such as shape/curvature) were almost immediately identifiable. It is important to note “the pop-out effect only occurs if the critical feature is unique to the target” (Quinlan, 2003, p. 649). Within the experiment, the target letters that stood out from the grids on which they were presented did so due to the fact that they had a “distinctive feature” (Quinlan, 2003, p. 654), for example the letter ‘T’ (an angular letter) would pop-out on a grid of round letters such as ‘O’, ‘Q’ and ‘C’. These findings also support the past research and literature regarding the FIT (Treisman & Gelade, 2003), with target letters that are similar to the grid taking longer to process and recognize due to the fact that serial searching is require – with each item being consulted