Question

Suppose you are looking for a dark-colored car in a row of parked cars. Among them, 11 are light-colored, and 1 is dark-colored. The dark-colored car seems to pop out. The pop-out was the result of you using ______.

a) Feature integration theory
b) Visual search efficiency
c) Parallel processing
d) Top-down processing

Answer 1

When a dark-colored car pops out among light-colored cars, it is due to parallel processing, which allows the visual system to identify items with distinct features, like color, simultaneously.

Step-by-step explanation:

When searching for a dark-colored car among a row of light-colored cars and it seems to pop out, this is a result of using parallel processing. This concept describes our visual system's ability to process multiple elements of a scene at the same time. Through this mechanism, the visual system can easily identify items that are distinct in features, such as color or shape, without the need to look at each item sequentially. This contrasts with top-down processing, which is a more deliberate and effortful search informed by experience and expectations.

Feature integration theory might also play a role in how we process the visual scene but in this case, it's the ability of our eyes and brain to process all the light-colored cars at once, and quickly identify the one dark-colored car, that makes it stand out. This is supported by research suggesting that objects in our visual field that are distinct in color or form can be more quickly recognized through parallel processing.