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The degree of human visual attention in the visual search

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Abstract

Human beings can obtain visual information in parallel through the retina, but they cannot pay attention to all the information at the same time. In psychological studies, the human characteristics of visual attention have often been investigated by analyzing the characteristics of the visual search task. Previous studies suggested that the information features of the visual search task are processed in parallel at early stages of processing. However, the authors consider that these features are not processed completely in parallel, and have a reciprocal action to each other. In order to clarify the reciprocal action of the features in a visual search and the continuity of visual attention, the characteristics of reaction times were measured with changing forms of visual stimuli. The experimental results suggested that the reaction time changed when the features of the visual stimuli in the visual search task changed. This means that the features are affected by each other. Furthermore, continuity of reciprocal action is also suggested, and the degree of visual attention is decided by this continuity. The results provided significant basic data to support our proposed mathematical model of visual attention.

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Correspondence to Jing-Long Wu.

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Mizuhara, H., Wu, JL. & Nishikawa, Y. The degree of human visual attention in the visual search. Artif Life Robotics 4, 57–61 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02480857

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02480857

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