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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...

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Autores principales: Kristjánsson, Árni, Jóhannesson, Ómar I., Thornton, Ian M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
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.
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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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