Arryn Robbins

Categorical templates are more useful when features are consistent: Evidence from eye movements during search for societally important vehicles

Unlike in laboratory visual search tasks—wherein participants are typically presented with a pictorial representation of the item they are asked to seek out—in real-world searches, the observer rarely has veridical knowledge of the visual features that define their target. During categorical search, observers look for any instance of a categorically defined target (e.g., helping a family member look for their mobile phone). In these circumstances, people may not have information about noncritical features (e.g., the phone’s color), and must instead create a broad mental representation using the features that define (or are typical of) the category of objects they are seeking out (e.g., modern phones are typically rectangular and thin). In the current investigation (Experiment 1), using a categorical visual search task, we add to the body of evidence suggesting that categorical templates are effective enough to conduct efficient visual searches. When color information was available (Experiment 1a), attentional guidance, attention restriction, and object identification were enhanced when participants looked for categories with consistent features (e.g., ambulances) relative to categories with more variable features (e.g., sedans). When color information was removed (Experiment 1b), attention benefits disappeared, but object recognition was still better for feature-consistent target categories. In Experiment 2, we empirically validated the relative homogeneity of our societally important vehicle stimuli. Taken together, our results are in line with a category-consistent view of categorical target templates (Yu, Maxfield, & Zelinsky in, Psychological Science, 2016. doi:10.1177/0956797616640237), and suggest that when features of a category are consistent and predictable, searchers can create mental representations that allow for the efficient guidance and restriction of attention as well as swift object identification.

Categorical target templates: Typical category members are found and identified quickly during word-cued search

What information do people use to guide search when they lack precise details about the appearance of their target? In this study, we employed categorical (word-cued) search and eye tracking, to examine how category typicality influences search performance. We found that typical category members were fixated and identified more quickly than atypical categories. This finding held when the participant was cued at the superordinate level (finding “clothing” among non-clothing items) or the basic level (finding a “shirt” among other clothing items). This suggests that categorical target templates may be constructed by piecing together features from the most typical category member(s).

Simulating the Fidelity of Data for Large Stimulus Set Sizes and Variable Dimension Estimation in Multidimensional Scaling

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is a statistical technique commonly used to model the psychological similarity among sets of stimulus items. Typically, MDS has been used with relatively small stimulus sets (30 items or fewer), in part due to the laborious nature of computational analysis and data collection. Modern computing power and newly advanced techniques for speeding data collection have made it possible to conduct MDS with many more stimuli. However, it is as yet unclear if MDS is as well-equipped to model the similarity of large stimulus sets as it is for more modest ones. Here, we conducted 337,500 simulation experiments, wherein hypothetical “true” MDS spaces were created, along with error-perturbed data from simulated “participants.” We examined the fidelity with which the spaces resulting from our “participants” captured the organization of the “true” spaces, as a function of item set size, amount of error in the data (i.e., noise), and dimensionality estimation. We found that although higher set sizes decrease model fit (i.e., they produce increased “stress”), they largely tended to increase determinacy of MDS spaces. These results are predicated, however, on the appropriate estimation of dimensionality of the MDS space. We argue that it is not only reasonable to adopt large stimulus set sizes but tends to be advantageous to do so. Applying MDS to larger sets is appealing, as it affords researchers greater flexibility in stimulus selection, more opportunity for exploration of their stimuli, and a higher likelihood that observed relationships are not due to stimulus-specific idiosyncrasies.

Object categorization performance modeled using multidimensional scaling and category-consistent features

• Participants provided similarity ratings for 144 objects (from 4 superordinate-level categories, each with 4 nested basic-level, and 3 nested subordinate categories). • Similarity ratings were obtained using the spatial arrangement method (SpAM; Hout et al., 2013, 2016). • 25 randomly selected items were first located outside a usable “arena.” They were arranged on screen and placed at distances (relative to one another) that represented the observer’s perception of similarity between each pair of items (closer in space denotes “more similar”). • Each participant completed 20 SpAM trials. There were 62 and 49 participants from NMSU and Stony Brook, respectively. Object categorization performance modeled using multidimensional scaling and category-consistent features Michael C. Hout 1, Justin Maxfield 2, Arryn Robbins 1, and Gregory J. Zelinsky 2 1New Mexico State University 2Stony Brook University

Find one fast, or find them all slow: Do collaborative visual searchers search more quickly or more thoroughly?

• N = 69 teams; four collaboration conditions (solo, collaborative, memory, visual). • Memory target set of 24 categories (e.g., teddy bears, printers). • Required to achieve 80% accuracy on a category recognition task before proceeding to search. • Participants viewed arrays of 32 real-world objects, finding 0-3 targets on each trial. • Feedback and points accrued were displayed after each trial (+1 point for every “hit” and -1 point for every “miss” or “false alarm”). • Encouraged to score as many points as possible.

Title: Drop the beat & miss T2: How various dimensions of music influence attentional failures

It is well established that emotional distractors enhance attentional control in demanding tasks such as the classic attentional blink paradigm (Olivers & Nieuwenhuis, 2005; Sussman, Heller, Miller, & Mohanty, 2013). By inducing a range of moods using music and memory generation, it has also been shown that the interaction of emotional valence and level of arousal have unique effects on second-target accuracy detection in the attentional blink (Jefferies, Smilek, Eich, & Enns, 2008). However, it is unclear how the specific type of music used to induce mood alters an individuals attention capabilities. While previous research has focused largely on coarse emotionality of musical selections, the interplay of rhythm and arousal (which can interact to sway emotional reactions) on attention has yet to be addressed. In this investigation, we sought to tease apart how various features of music affect attention by manipulating the accompanying musical selection during an attentional blink task. Our participants were randomly assigned to one of eight experimental conditions in which musical selections encompassed a factorial combination of emotional valence (positive or negative), arousal (high or low), and rhythm (rhythmic or non-rhythmic). Participants were asked to detect two digits in a stream of rapidly presented letters. Our findings replicate prior work (Olivers & Neiuwenhuis, 2005, Jeffries et al., 2008) showing that music has a beneficial effect on attention; participants committed fewer attentional failures while listening to music, relative to a (counterbalanced) no-music baseline block. More importantly, we found that the rhythmicity and valence of music had no affect on attention, but that the level of arousal of the piece, has a negative effect on attention; arousing music increases the size of the attentional blink. This suggests that a wide range of music types may have beneficial effects on attention, with less arousing music providing the attentional benefit. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.