From Features to Foraging: Current Developments in Visual Search by Human Observers

Visual search is a ubiquitous behavior among sighted organisms. The study of visual search in humans has a rich history in cognitive psychology and allied fields going back over a century. Visual search paradigms have been used to probe the nature of the visual system for decades. However, these studies were predominantly characterized by a single known target appearing with 50% prevalence. Partly driven by the scientific challenge of doing work that is both theoretically relevant and applicable to real world search challenges such as medical image perception and airport baggage screening, researchers have been expanding the parameters of search experiments. Key developments in the field include the study of the effects of prevalence, individual differences, and “hybrid search” for multiple potential targets. We are starting to consider visual search as a branch of foraging, opening up the possibility for collaboration with population ecology and other disciplines that study search.