ArticleAttention, perception & psychophysics2015
Target templates: the precision of mental representations affects attentional guidance and decision-making in visual search.
Article in Attention, perception & psychophysics, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed.
- Do we remember templates better so that we can reject distractors better?Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2020Trial
- A multidimensional-scaling study of images from diverse everyday-object categories.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- ThreatSim: A novel stimuli database of threatening and nonthreatening image pairs rated for similarity.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- Article
- Preparatory attentional templates in prefrontal and sensory cortex encode target-associated information.eLife · 2025Article
- Investigating memory episodes in location probability learning: Can altering response features reset spatial bias?Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Article
- Perceptual Expertise and Attention: An Exploration using Deep Neural Networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Attention to object categories: Selection history determines the breadth of attentional tuning during real-world object search.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2024Article
- Attenuation of spatial bias with target template variation.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- No evidence of attentional prioritization for threatening targets in visual search.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Searching near and far: The attentional template incorporates viewing distance.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · 2024Article
- Similarity ratings for basic-level categories from the Nosofsky et al. (2018) database of rock images.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Where's Wanda? The influence of visual imagery vividness on visual search speed measured by means of hidden object pictures.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2024Article
- Expected distractor context biases the attentional template for target shapes.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · 2023Article
- Mirror blindness: Our failure to recognize the target in search for mirror-reversed shapes.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2023Article
- Assessing satisfaction of search in virtual mammograms for experienced and novice searchers.Journal of medical imaging (Bellingham, Wash.) · 2023Article
- Attentional priority is determined by predicted feature distributions.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · 2022Article
- Visual search guidance uses coarser template information than target-match decisions.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2022Article
- Negative cues minimize visual search specificity effects.Vision research · 2022Article
- Target-rate effect in continuous visual search.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
When people look for things in the environment, they use target templates-mental representations of the objects they are attempting to locate-to guide attention and to assess incoming visual input as potential targets. However, unlike laboratory participants, searchers in the real world rarely have perfect knowledge regarding the potential appearance of targets. In seven experiments, we examined how the precision of target templates affects the ability to conduct visual search. Specifically, we degraded template precision in two ways: 1) by contaminating searchers' templates with inaccurate features, and 2) by introducing extraneous features to the template that were unhelpful. We recorded eye movements to allow inferences regarding the relative extents to which attentional guidance and decision-making are hindered by template imprecision. Our findings support a dual-function theory of the target template and highlight the importance of examining template precision in visual search.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.