Feature Integration Theory

1792 Words8 Pages
Abstract The aim of this study was to discover if having more distractors would affect the results of a conjunction search. The data was collected by testing 30 students in a classroom setting. The students were shown a collection of conjunction tests some with more distractors than the other and asked to write down the answers. The results of these tests supported the hypothesis. It is implied that the more distractors there are then the more time it will take to complete a conjunction search. Triesman’s feature integration theory (FIT) was developed to better understand the purpose of human attention. (Treisman, & Gelade, 1980). Triesman and colleagues (Treisman & Gelade 1980) stated that there were two stages used in visual attention processing. When a test subject is asked to locate a red dot in a background of green, attention is immediately focused on the red dot, this first stage of attention processing is called a feature search (Neisser, 1967. cited in Wolfe, Cave & Franzel 1989). Treismans’ et al.(1980) theory states that only basic features such as colour, size and orientation could be located effortlessly in parallel over an entire visual field. The theory goes on to say that all other stimuli require a serial search. A serial search is required for targets defined by conjunctions of basic features. (Treisman et al. 1980);(Treisman, 1986 cited in Wolfe et al. 1989). When the subject is required to locate conjunctions of these features within an environment of similar objects, attention is narrowed to one smaller area at a time and the object is searched for in serial. (Dykeman 1999; Treisman & Gelade 1980). Parallel feature searches are defined by if the search time is un-affected by the number of distractors in a scene. Conversely the serial conjunction search takes longer depending on the number of distractors and the
Open Document