Abstract：
People differ in how well they search. What are the factors that might contribute to this variability? We tested the contribution of two cognitive abilities: visual working memory (VWM) capacity and object recognition ability. Participants completed three tasks: a difficult inefficient visual search task, where they searched for a target letter T among skewed L distractors; a VWM task, where they memorized a color array and then identified whether a probed color belonged to the previous array; and the Novel Object Memory Test (NOMT), where they learnt complex novel objects and then identified them amongst objects that closely resembled them. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that there are two latent factors that explain the shared variance among these three tasks: a factor indicative of the level of caution participants exercised during the challenging visual search task, and a factor representing their visual cognitive abilities. People who score high on the search cautiousness tend to perform a more accurate but slower search. People who score high on the visual cognitive ability factor tend to have a higher VWM capacity, a better object recognition ability, and a faster search speed. The results reflect two points: (1) Visual search tasks share components with visual working memory and object recognition tasks. (2) Search performance is influenced not only by the search display\'s properties but also by individual predispositions such as caution and general visual abilities. This study introduces new factors for consideration when interpreting variations in visual search behaviors.
摘要：
人们在搜索方面有所不同。我们测试了两种认知能力的贡献：视觉工作记忆（VWM）能力和物体识别能力。参与者完成了三项任务：一项困难的低效视觉搜索任务，他们在偏斜的L干扰者中搜索目标字母T；VWM任务，他们记忆了一个颜色数组，然后确定被探测的颜色是否属于前一个数组；以及新颖的对象记忆测试(NOMT)，在那里他们学习了复杂的新奇物体，然后在与它们非常相似的物体中识别出它们。探索性和验证性因素分析显示，有两个潜在因素可以解释这三个任务之间的共同差异：一个因素表明参与者在具有挑战性的视觉搜索任务中行使的谨慎程度，也是代表他们视觉认知能力的因素。谨慎搜索得分高的人倾向于执行更准确但较慢的搜索。在视觉认知能力因子上得分高的人往往具有较高的VWM能力，更好的物体识别能力，更快的搜索速度。结果反映了两点：（1）视觉搜索任务与视觉工作记忆和对象识别任务共享组件。（2）搜索性能不仅受搜索显示属性的影响，还受个人偏好（如谨慎和一般视觉能力）的影响。这项研究引入了解释视觉搜索行为变化时要考虑的新因素。
