Announcing the Final Examination of Jessica Goetz for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Psychology – Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology
Traditionally, research on feature-based search has utilized simple stimuli. Many of these studies have found that color is preferentially used as a guiding feature. Several studies examining color guidance in visual search for real-world objects have been limited by the subjective color classification of objects. Color histograms used in computer vision may solve color classification subjectivity. The current set of studies examined how search was guided by color and color proportions in real-world objects. To bridge the gap between simple stimuli and real-world objects, the first experiment examined how different color compositions in color conjunctions affected search. In the second experiment, real-world objects were objectively classified according to their primary color as determined by a color histogram, which was used to predict behavior. Finally, in the third experiment, real-world objects were classified by both their primary and secondary colors, which again, was used to predict behavior. Across three experiments the results demonstrated that search was guided by both colors of the target and there was more guidance to objects that matched the target’s primary color than the target’s secondary color. The studies showed that theories derived from impoverished laboratory settings can be applied to more realistic stimuli and tools developed in computer vision research can be used as an objective measure.
Committee in Charge
Committee Chair: Dr. Mark Neider
Department Committee Member: Dr. Joseph Schmidt
Department Committee Member: Dr. Valerie Sims
Outside Committee Member: Dr. Christopher Dickinson
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