Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, im doing a science fair project and its due on jan 2nd, but im actually on vacation rite now, and luckily there is internet. im on a ship rite now, and when the ship leaves, there will be no more internet and so i need help as soon as possible. please. im doing a project on distractors and targets. The problem is will changing the number of distractors affect the ability of an observer to find the target? i downloaded the software to run the tests, and i have all the results. im actually up to the research now, and i just want to ask what the science is behind this. i know that the more distractors there are the harder it is to find the target, but i dont know why. i already went on all the websites sciencebuddies provided, and i do not understand them. so can someone please help me? what is the science behind this? thank you.

Hello ssyu!

I did a few quick searches- it's talking about a 'visual search', which is really more related to psychology than to computer science.

The idea is that the brain filters objects based on criteria- for example, if the task is to spot a green square in a grid of yellow triangles, the brain might look for green objects. However, if the task is to find a green square in a grid of green triangles and yellow squares, it isn't so simple. The brain might have to look for green objects first, then look through those for a square. Since it has to do more searches, and search more objects, the second task would tend to take longer.

There are apparently a few different theories on how it actually works, though, so I'd recommend searching "visual search" or "psychology visual search" online and finding a few good, understandable sites.

Hope this helped, and if you have any other questions, just ask!