Semantic Connection Effect In Visual Search

Visual search is a classic paradigm to investigate attention. Visual attention and working memory plays an important role in the search process. Studies have shown that visual attention and working memory have interaction, selective attention lead the target enter visual-spatial working memory, then target template stored in the working memory guide the distribution of attention which lead to biased competition and inhibition of return. There are top-down and bottom-up processing in the visual search, which is flexibly based on the difficulty of the task, the visual salience of the search target. Previous studies investigated semantic integration process and the relationship between syntactic and semantic information by examine sentence comprehension and eye movement in reading, and found the Semantic Priming and semantic inhibition in semantic processing. Eye movement could be affect by familiarity, predictability, understandability and other factors. According to the results of previous studies, we assume that in semantic visual search task, semantic relationship between words could lead to attention bias, eye movement behavior patterns and the memory of words.In this study we adopt visual search-recognition paradigm and use two-character Chinese words as materials. In experiment1, we investigated how semantic relationship between words effect visual attention distribute strategy and impact on the search process through eye movement and memory retrieval. In experiment2, we examine the effect of word comprehension, the relationship of semantic connection and syntactic connection between words, and their effect on eye movement and memory retrieval. In addition, in both two experiments we use the concept of "subsequent memory effect" to discuss the relation between successful memory and eye movement (fixation and saccade pattern).In synonyms search-recognition experiment, the recognition accuracy rate of synonyms is highest, the recognition correct rate of unrelated words is lowest; total fixation duration, first fixation time and dwell time of synonyms are longest, and unrelated words are shortest. In sentence determine-recognition experiment, subjects completed the sentence judgment task fastest on unrelated words and slowest on semantic related words; the recognition accuracy rate of syntax related words and semantic related words is higher than unrelated words; total fixation duration, first fixation time, dwell time, saccades among words and saccades in word of syntax related words and semantic related words are higher than unrelated words. In "subsequent memory effect" study of eye movement, we found that subsequent memory effect of eye movement is significant when semantic association is weak; but when semantic association is strong, the subsequent memory effect of eye movement would be greatly weakened.Results of the experiments show that (1) the semantic contact can cause visual attention bias in visual search, reflected by more eye movement behavior on the target and its semantic contacted words;(2) in semantic processing, context and syntax will play a top-down role in guiding word cognition and memory retrial, context and syntax conflict will hinder sentence determine, but will cause more visual attention;(3) memory effect by top-down semantic conect and bottom-up visual input control.