Title:
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The influence of salience on spatial search performance
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During search, individuals direct attention to potential targets and remember locations
visited. Previously this has been examined in visual search paradigms, but this thesis investigates
these mechanisms of attention and memory in large scale search. Participants searched a room
containing an array of illuminated locations embedded in the floor. The participants' task was to
press the switches at the illuminated locations on the floor to locate a target that changed colour
when pressed. Across all experiments, the perceptual salience of search locations was
manipulated by having some locations flashing and some static. Adults and children (Age 6-12)
are more likely to search at flashing locations - their attention is captured by the salience of the
flashing lights, leading to a bias to explore these targets (Chapter 2 Experiments 1-4). This effect
is robust and does not show developmental progression from 6years of age through adulthood
(Chapter 3 Experiment 1). Both adults and children are more able to equally explore flashing and
static exploration to flashing locations when not required to remember which locations had been
previously visited, indicating an interaction between memory and attention mechanisms during
search. This finding builds upon established work of load theory of attention during visual
search. Further evidence for this memory attention interaction comes from search tasks with
concurrent digit span or auditory tasks (Chapter 2 Experiments 3& 4, Chapter 3 Experiment 2).
Finally I examine ability to learn likely target locations (Chapter 4) and find that adults are more
able and faster, to learn likely target locations among salient targets. Overall, this thesis provides
an account of the strong interactions between attention and memory during large scale search,
and how these processes develop. It builds upon a framework from visual search literature to
understand how these processes function and develop in a larger search environment
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