Visual Search for People Among People
Abstract
Humans can effectively search visual scenes by spatial location, visual feature, or whole object. Here, we showed that visual search can also benefit from fast appraisal of relations between individuals in human groups. Healthy adults searched for a facing (seemingly interacting) body dyad among nonfacing dyads or a nonfacing dyad among facing dyads. We varied the task parameters to emphasize processing of targets or distractors. Facing-dyad targets were more likely to recruit attention than nonfacing-dyad targets (Experiments 1, 2, and 4). Facing-dyad distractors were checked and rejected more efficiently than nonfacing-dyad distractors (Experiment 3). Moreover, search for an individual body was more difficult when it was embedded in a facing dyad than in a nonfacing dyad (Experiment 5). We propose that fast grouping of interacting bodies in one attentional unit is the mechanism that accounts for efficient processing of dyads within human groups and for the inefficient access to individual parts within a dyad.
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Open practices
Data and materials for these experiments have not been made publicly available but can be requested from the corresponding author. The design and analysis plans for the experiments were not preregistered.
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Published In
Article first published online: September 18, 2019
Issue published: October 2019
Keywords
Open practices
PubMed: 31532709
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Author Contributions
L. Papeo and S. Soto-Faraco developed the study concept. L. Papeo and N. Goupil designed the study and collected and analyzed the data. L. Papeo drafted the manuscript, and S. Soto-Faraco provided critical revisions. All the authors approved the final manuscript for submission.
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