{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/568q9","title":"How do people find pairs?","abstract":"In visual search, observers compare what they see in visual scenes to target representation(s) activated in memory. In the lab, the specific target is typically known in advance, and remains the same across trials, resulting in a fixed memory representation. Here we studied a situation in which the target is not known a priori, and memory needs to be dynamically updated during the actual search. Observers compared two simultaneously presented arrays of objects for any matching pair of items. As any item in the display is a potential candidate, this task requires frequent memory updating in combination with sensory-memory comparisons. We ran two versions of the task, one in which scanning was easy (involving just eye movements), and one in which scanning was impeded (also involving mouse movements). In both versions, the response times, the number of transitions between displays, and the dwell time before each transition increased linearly with set sizes, consistent with regular updating of memory content. Importantly, there was a trade-off between memorizing and transitioning: When scanning was impeded, more items were memorized and observers switched less often between displays. When scanning was relatively easy, observers memorized less, but switched back and forth between displays more often. Thus, observers can adaptively shift between external sampling and internal memorizing during the search, revealing a dynamic interplay between memory and visual selection.","journal":"PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)","year":2023,"id":398049,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9398,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1132760,"name":"Zhenzhong Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-7882-1066","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":402215,"name":"Jeremy M. Wolfe","orcid":"0000-0002-6475-1984","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1132761,"name":"Christian N. L. Olivers","orcid":"0000-0001-7470-5378","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1132759,"name":"Aoqi Li","orcid":"0000-0001-6373-6638","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":34,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:19:43.776284Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}