Training for strategy in visual search

To establish whether the eye-movement strategy in visual search is changeable by training, three groups of ten subjects each were trained on different strategies using performance feedback and eye movement monitoring. The task was inspection of simulated solder joint arrays, with three levels of field size and three target types. Training in systematic search produced significantly higher performance than natural search, while random search training degraded performance. These results generalized across both field size and target types. Individual differences were less well predicted by pretests than in comparable studies. It is concluded that strategy training can be effective in adoption of a desirable systematic search strategy.