When is it time to move to the next map? Optimal foraging in guided visual search

Abstract

Suppose that you are looking for visual targets in a set of images, each containing an unknown number of targets. How do you perform that search, and how do you decide when to move from the current image to the next? Optimal foraging theory predicts that foragers should leave the current image when the expected value from staying falls below the expected value from leaving. Here, we describe how to apply these models to more complex tasks, like search for objects in natural scenes where people have prior beliefs about the number and locations of targets in each image, and search is guided by target features and scene context. We model these factors in a guided search task and predict the opt..