ABSTRACT
Researchers from various domains have made efforts at modeling visual search behavior and performance. Evidence from a number of studies has converged on a general model of applied visual search incorporating a series of perceptual, attentional, and decisional processes. Thus, researchers have not only garnered an extensive applied knowledge of visual search but also have grounded that knowledge on a strong theoretical foundation. Efforts to understand visual search, however, have largely focused on the former process, exploring the nature of the global and focal processes involved in search and in assessing the information that controls visual scanning. In practice, the problem of characterizing visual search is often more difficult than the simple taxonomy of the standard parallel–serial and self-terminating–exhaustive processes suggests. Feature integration theory thus proposes that perceptual processing of visual features is qualitatively different from processing of feature conjunctions.
