Foraging tempo: Human run patterns in multiple-target search are constrained by the rate of successive responses

Abstract

Human foraging tasks are beginning to provide new insights into the roles of vision, attention, and working memory during complex, multiple-target search. Here, we test the idea that “foraging tempo”—the rate of successive target selections—helps determine patterns of behaviour in these tasks. Previously, we established that the majority of target selections during unconstrained foraging happen at regular, rapid intervals, forming the “cruise phase” of a foraging trial. Furthermore, we noted that when the temporal interval between cruise phase responses was longer, the tendency to switch between target categories increased. To directly explore this relationship, we modified our standard iPad foraging task so that observers had to synchronise each response with an auditory metronome signal. Across trials, we increased the tempo and examined how this changed patterns of foraging when targets were defined either by a single feature or by a conjunction of features. The results were very clear. Increasing tempo systematically decreased the tendency for participants to switch between target categories. Although this was true for both feature and conjunction trials, there was also evidence that time constraints and target complexity interacted. As in our previous work, we also observed clear individual differences in how participants responded to changes in task difficulty. Overall, our results show that foraging tempo does influence the way participants respond, and we suggest this parameter may prove to be useful in further explorations of group and individual strategies during multiple-target search.