Easy does it: Selection during interactive search tasks is biased towards objects that can be examined easily.

Abstract

It is well understood that attentional selection is required to deploy visual attention to relevant objects within displays during visual search tasks. Interactive search, an extension of visual search, refers to tasks wherein an individual must manipulate items within their environment to uncover obscured information whilst searching for a target object. Here, we conducted two independent interactive search experiments where participants were asked to interact with virtual cubes to locate a target T shape embedded onto the side of one of the cubes. Our goal here was to investigate the drivers of attentional selection within interactive searches. To do so, we manipulated the effort required to rotate cubes (Experiment 1) and the quantity of shapes attached to the cubes (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that the perceived effort required to interact with an object is an extremely strong driver of attentional selection within interactive search behaviors. Here, targets may be slower to be detected when that target is obscured within or by an object that conveys, in some shape or form, greater difficulty to examine compared with other objects. These findings provide an exciting first step towards understanding the factors that influence selection during interactive searches. Data and experimental code for all experiments in this study can be accessed online via this web address: https://osf.io/2zyvf/?view_only=ae4f4f2c36ab4e6aae5da3e99fb81988 . Experiments were not preregistered.