Prof Cheryl Metcalf

Looking forward to today - always an interesting day @sehta.bsky.social

Authors on blue sky: @hadendewis.bsky.social, @haywardgodwin.bsky.social, @cherylmetcalf.bsky.social

Easy does it: Selection during interactive search tasks is biased towards objects that can be examined easily - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics It is well understood that attentional selection is required to deploy visual attention to relevant objects within displays during visual search tasks. Interactive search, an extension of visual searc...

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Bottom line: Interactive search is strongly biased by effort.

When searching, we begin by focusing on areas that require the least effort. Even when doing so comes at a cost.

📄 Full paper: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

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To our surprise, in Experiment 2, participants consistently prioritised interactions with information-poor cubes first.

🔍 Why? We believe that whilst less optimal, it was cognitively easier to process information-poor cubes first.

In other words, effort wins again.

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In Experiment 2 we focused on visual information. Cubes either contained multiple shapes (information-rich) or were predominately empty (information-poor).

Our logic? Focusing on areas with a large number of potential targets would be the more optimal strategy.

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In Experiment 1, half of the cubes were made to be hard to rotate, and half were easy.

Our results showed that participants developed an extremely strong and consistent bias towards selecting easy cubes first.

😴 We’re wired to avoid physical effort – even in simple mouse movements.

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Methods: We ran two experiments where participants rotated virtual cubes whilst trying to find a target T-shape amongst distractor L shapes.

💻 We utilised @threejs.org and @jspsych.org to make this possible. You can demo this yourself via this link! – tinyurl.com/4tz6aufs

Easy does it: Selection during interactive search tasks is biased towards objects that can be examined easily - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics It is well understood that attentional selection is required to deploy visual attention to relevant objects within displays during visual search tasks. Interactive search, an extension of visual searc...

Ever fumbled through your bag for your keys? That’s an interactive search: moving objects to uncover obscured visual information.

In a new paper from our lab, we asked: What determines where people choose to look first in these tasks?

Spoiler: effort matters.

🔗 doi.org/10.3758/s134...
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Well, that’s one way to work at a weekend!

Fascinating introduction to the health system in Sri Lanka today from our excellent colleagues from the Commonwealth Fellowship and the University of Columbo.

Ignored, blamed, and sometimes left to die – a leading expert in ME explains the origins of a modern medical scandal The co-lead of the world’s largest ever genetic study into ME calls for a radical change in how society deals with the disease.

On World ME Day, congratulations Jodie Hamilton, winner of the Emerge Australia ME/CFS Awards for Excellence in Journalism vist.ly/3n3rpyr. Thank you, Emerge, for shortlisting my "Ignored, blamed, and sometimes left to die" article. theconversation.com/ignored-blam...

For Head Space week I’m taking a moment and have whisked my way up to London to @thekingsfund.bsky.social to hear Marshall Ganz talk about his new book: People Power Change : Organising for Democratic Renewal #booklaunch

He sure did!

Relaxing day after a crazy few weeks!

I have waited my whole life, for this moment....

Home for the weekend. What a beautiful thing to see approaching the station!