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Evaluation Of The Research And Creative Work

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UROP Application Spring 2016
Christopher Jones
Mentor: Trafton Drew
Department of Psychology Statement of the Problem/Topic of the Research or Creative Work Visual Search is important in our everyday lives, and search relies on cues from the environment and uses object similarity to guide search. While much research has been done to see how visual similarity between objects affects visual search (Duncan and Humphreys 1989), very little research has been done to see how different types of similarity between objects compare in their effects on visual search. Specifically the proposed project would investigate how semantic similarity and visual similarity influence visual search using real world objects. The usage of real world objects is important because many laboratory visual search tasks are not reflective of visual search in a real world setting. Neural measures gathered from EEG (Electroencephalogram) data in the form of ERP (Event-Related Potential) components can be used to measure onset of attentional processing, as well as how distracting certain objects may or may not be. Specifically the N2PC reflects a shift in attention to a visual target. Using this ERP component, the neural differences between visual and semantic similarity in objects can be evaluated and compared between participants. While research shows there is a behavioral effect between visual and semantic similarity among distractors in visual search (De Groot, Huettig, and Olivers 2016),

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