Multi-target visual foraging: a modern and ecologically-valid model for studying visual attention in humans – MULTIFOR

While numerous studies have been conducted to understand how humans efficiently search for a single visual target among multiple distractors in the visual environment, studies involving search, or foraging, for multiple targets are far fewer. However, this situation is much more prevalent in everyday life, and gaining insights into the mechanisms of human visual foraging could yield important new findings for basic research in cognitive psychology of attention. Additionally, this could have significant impact for applied research, particularly in the field of education. Critically, understanding the development of visual foraging abilities during childhood is a major concern, especially in educational context where pupils require guidance when foraging in the classroom for relevant information to complete academic tasks.

This research project is led by Dr. Jérôme Tagu and aims to 1/ identify the factors leading to efficient visual foraging, 2/ examine how these factors develop during childhood, and 3/ apply this knowledge to the field of education. It involves experiments conducted in laboratory, ecologically-valid and real-world conditions, with adult and school-age child participants. The examination of oculomotor behaviour and individual differences will help identifying efficient foraging strategies and will provide detailed information about the mechanisms of target selection during visual foraging. Altogether, in three work packages, the MULTIFOR project will provide 1/ new and important insights into the mechanisms of human visual foraging and their development during childhood, and 2/ critical practical information about foraging abilities of pupils during learning.