@article { , title = {Walking, talking and looking: effects of divided attention on gaze behaviour and visual search performance in a real-world environment}, abstract = {Visually-guided behaviour in the laboratory may not always reflect that in larger-scale environments, using more realistic tasks. (eg Smith et al, 2008 Cogn Process 9 121-126). Here, we explored (1) what people look at; (2) how quickly they find a target; and (3) whether divided attention (counting backwards in 7 s from 100) influences performance in a large-scale, active, visual search task in a real-world environment. Fourteen young adults (19–25 years) were asked to locate a target (white postcard) in a shop window as they walked along a pavement in Edinburgh, UK, under both ‘control’ and ‘divided attention’ conditions. Eye movements were recorded using a head-mounted eye tracker and coded manually according to object-based (‘what’) and location-based (‘where’) categories. Measurements were made from the point of first fixation on the correct shop display. Participants fixated significantly less often on task-relevant objects, and took significantly longer to find the target in the ‘divided attention’ condition compared with the control. No differences were found in terms of location-based (‘where’) categories. This suggests that real-world visual search performance in large-scale environments requires the activity of limited capacity, central attentional resources, but that visual scanning strategies (‘where’ we look) may not.}, eissn = {1468-4233}, issn = {0301-0066}, note = {School: sch\_lss no doi available LG/Mer 14/12/2012}, pages = {35}, publicationstatus = {Published}, publisher = {SAGE Publications}, url = {http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/5475}, volume = {39}, keyword = {388 Transportation; ground transportation, HE Transportation and Communications, eye-movements, visual search, real-world, attention, working memory}, year = {2024}, author = {Wincenciak, Joanna and Egan, Christopher D and Willis, Alexandra} }