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Visual search with many targets in mind: A successful replication of Drew, Boettcher, and Wolfe (2017)

by Joshua R de Leeuw, John H Long, Hana Colley, Asher Donnelly, Layla Fakki, Carmen Haley, John D Jarolimek, Sydney Jones, Ellie Kogan, Gabriel Jove Leonard, Mingyang Liao, Nicholas Misko, Esmé Nix, Zoe North, Nidhi Pandruvada, Samip Paudel, Cassidy Schuchat, Hannah Tsukamoto, Kinsey Wang, Joselyn Xa-Chin, and Aijia Zou

Posted: October 20, 2026
Server: PsyArXiv
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/erp9w_v1

We conducted a direct replication of Drew et al. (2017). The experiment examines visualsearch behavior, including eye movements, when participants are looking for one of manymemorized objects. The original experiment found that the search strategy for this kind ofsearch, called hybrid search, involves “one visual search [and] many memory searches.” Ourreplication (N=38) finds strong agreement with the original (N=14) results. As the number ofmemorized objects increases, participants fixate longer on each individual object. Furthermore,refixations are generally rare, with fewer than half of the visual items refixated during search.We conducted this replication as part of the course Research Methods in Cognitive Science atVassar College, and we briefly discuss the pedagogical framing of this work.

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