Searching for Traffic Signals while Engaged in Compensatory Tracking

An experiment is described in which subjects were required to search for familiar traffic signals. Half the time this was done while also engaged in a manual compensatory tracking task. The experimental variables of the visual search task were color, total number of signals exposed, the number of relevant signals, and the density of the signals. The results showed performance degradation for both tasks when the visual search and the tracking tasks were performed concurrently. Examination of the main effects and interactions suggest that, except when color was a perfect cue, visual search was a sequential process. Other theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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