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Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging
Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or “runs” that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4071029/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24964082 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100752 |
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author | Kristjánsson, Árni Jóhannesson, Ómar I. Thornton, Ian M. |
author_facet | Kristjánsson, Árni Jóhannesson, Ómar I. Thornton, Ian M. |
author_sort | Kristjánsson, Árni |
collection | PubMed |
description | Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or “runs” that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend to focus on one food type at a time, effectively ignoring equally available sources. This latter finding is regarded as a key indicator that animal foraging is strongly constrained by attention. It is unknown whether human foraging is equally constrained. Here, using a novel iPad task, we demonstrate for the first time that it is. Participants were required to locate and touch 40 targets from 2 different categories embedded within a dense field of distractors. When individual target items “popped-out” search was organized into multiple runs, with frequent switching between target categories. In contrast, as soon as focused attention was required to identify individual targets, participants typically exhausted one entire category before beginning to search for the other. This commonality in animal and human foraging is compelling given the additional cognitive tools available to humans, and suggests that attention constrains search behavior in a similar way across a broad range of species. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4071029 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-40710292014-06-27 Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging Kristjánsson, Árni Jóhannesson, Ómar I. Thornton, Ian M. PLoS One Research Article Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or “runs” that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend to focus on one food type at a time, effectively ignoring equally available sources. This latter finding is regarded as a key indicator that animal foraging is strongly constrained by attention. It is unknown whether human foraging is equally constrained. Here, using a novel iPad task, we demonstrate for the first time that it is. Participants were required to locate and touch 40 targets from 2 different categories embedded within a dense field of distractors. When individual target items “popped-out” search was organized into multiple runs, with frequent switching between target categories. In contrast, as soon as focused attention was required to identify individual targets, participants typically exhausted one entire category before beginning to search for the other. This commonality in animal and human foraging is compelling given the additional cognitive tools available to humans, and suggests that attention constrains search behavior in a similar way across a broad range of species. Public Library of Science 2014-06-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4071029/ /pubmed/24964082 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100752 Text en © 2014 Kristjánsson, et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Kristjánsson, Árni Jóhannesson, Ómar I. Thornton, Ian M. Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging |
title | Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging |
title_full | Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging |
title_fullStr | Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging |
title_full_unstemmed | Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging |
title_short | Common Attentional Constraints in Visual Foraging |
title_sort | common attentional constraints in visual foraging |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4071029/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24964082 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100752 |
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