Variable Memory Models of Visual Search

Todd S Horowitz

Visual search and memory interact on a number of different levels, from remembering what you're looking for to remembering frequent prior target locations or features to remembering what you've already looked at and what still needs to be searched. At each level, we can ask about the capacity of memory. I will focus on our capacity to remember which objects we have already examined; that is, what is the sampling regime in visual search? I will discuss several methodologies for answering this question, using data from our laboratory and others to estimate how much memory our search engine has in different situations.