VISUAL-SEARCH AND SEGREGATION AS A FUNCTION OF DISPLAY COMPLEXITY

Complexity is proposed as an important psychological factor in search and segregation tasks. Displays were presented with target and nontarg et areas that were each built up of one type of randomly rotated micro patterns. We manipulated experimentally (a) the complexity of the targ et elements, as measured by Garner's (1970) invariance criterion; (b) the complexity of the target region; (c) the complexity of the nontarg ets; and (d) the number of elements within a target region. The main r esult is that detectability increases when the within-region complexit y of the target and the nontarget regions decreases. Furthermore, inte ractions between the target and nontarget areas affect detectability t oo: We found that search asymmetry is produced by the asymmetrical eff ect of complexity when target and nontarget areas are interchanged.