Part-whole information assists in topological × topological but not in orientation × orientation conjunction searches

Abstract

Visual search is a routine task used in everyday life and is an important field of research in cognitive psychology. In laboratory settings, it has been shown that search for a target defined by a unique conjunction of two colours is more efficient if one colour surrounds the other (a part-whole search) compared to when no such hierarchical structural relationship exists (a part-part search; Wolfe et al. in Perception & Psychophysics, 55, 537, 1994). A similar result has been shown to hold for size × size conjunction searches (Bilsky & Wolfe in Perception & Psychophysics, 57, 749, 1995). We show that this result also holds for topology × topology conjunction searches (where the stimuli are e..