Congruency between viewers' movements and the region of the display being sampled speeds up search through an aperture.

Abstract

Searching for a target amongst distractors is faster when moving an aperture over the search display than when moving the search display beneath an aperture. Is this because when moving the aperture, each item is sampled at a different position, while when moving the search display, all items are sampled at the same position? When moving the aperture, it might therefore be easier to keep track of where one has already searched. Experiment 1 showed that, when the extent of the search display is visible to provide an additional reference frame, participants still found targets faster when moving the aperture. Experiment 2 showed that, even when the aperture and search display constantly moved around the screen together so that remembering where on the screen one had already searched is less useful, participants still found targets faster when moving the aperture. Experiment 3 showed that inverting the mapping between movements of the mouse and the item they were toggled to reversed the outcome: for the inverted mapping, search was faster when moving the search display than when moving the aperture. We conclude that the congruency between the user's movements and the spatial region of the search display that they are sampling from is critical for speeding up search.