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Review
. 2015 Mar;1339(1):72-81.
doi: 10.1111/nyas.12667. Epub 2015 Feb 12.

The role of memory for visual search in scenes

Melissa Le-Hoa Võ  1 , Jeremy M Wolfe
Affiliations
Review

The role of memory for visual search in scenes

Melissa Le-Hoa Võ et al. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2015 Mar.

Abstract

Many daily activities involve looking for something. The ease with which these searches are performed often allows one to forget that searching represents complex interactions between visual attention and memory. Although a clear understanding exists of how search efficiency will be influenced by visual features of targets and their surrounding distractors or by the number of items in the display, the role of memory in search is less well understood. Contextual cueing studies have shown that implicit memory for repeated item configurations can facilitate search in artificial displays. When searching more naturalistic environments, other forms of memory come into play. For instance, semantic memory provides useful information about which objects are typically found where within a scene, and episodic scene memory provides information about where a particular object was seen the last time a particular scene was viewed. In this paper, we will review work on these topics, with special emphasis on the role of memory in guiding search in organized, real-world scenes.

Keywords: eye movements; memory; scene perception; visual search.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Fixation heatmaps that indicate search space when looking for soap in the bathroom for the first time when placed in a consistent location (A) and the first time when placed in an inconsistent location (B). After several hundred trials looking for the soap again for a second time when placed in a consistent location (C) or when placed in an inconsistent location (D). The percentage indicates eye movement coverage of the scene and the percentage in brackets indicates reduction of search space from search#1 minus search#2. Data replotted from Ref. .
Figure 2
Figure 2
Fixation heatmaps that indicate search space when looking for a plate in the kitchen for the first time (A) and subsequently for the tomatoes that had been looked at previously during the search for the plate (B), and after several hundred trials looking for the plates again (C) as well as for the tomatoes (D). Data replotted from Ref. .
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