We have a paper out at Behavior Research Methods. Led by Hayward Godwin, it examines sharing practices (using visual search as a case study) and makes recs for sharing data outputs in a manner that will enable others to better find, access, and understand them. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Authors on blue sky: @hadendewis.bsky.social, @haywardgodwin.bsky.social, @cherylmetcalf.bsky.social

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Bottom line: Interactive search is strongly biased by effort.

When searching, we begin by focusing on areas that require the least effort. Even when doing so comes at a cost.

📄 Full paper: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

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To our surprise, in Experiment 2, participants consistently prioritised interactions with information-poor cubes first.

🔍 Why? We believe that whilst less optimal, it was cognitively easier to process information-poor cubes first.

In other words, effort wins again.

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In Experiment 2 we focused on visual information. Cubes either contained multiple shapes (information-rich) or were predominately empty (information-poor).

Our logic? Focusing on areas with a large number of potential targets would be the more optimal strategy.

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In Experiment 1, half of the cubes were made to be hard to rotate, and half were easy.

Our results showed that participants developed an extremely strong and consistent bias towards selecting easy cubes first.

😴 We’re wired to avoid physical effort – even in simple mouse movements.

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Methods: We ran two experiments where participants rotated virtual cubes whilst trying to find a target T-shape amongst distractor L shapes.

💻 We utilised @threejs.org and @jspsych.org to make this possible. You can demo this yourself via this link! – tinyurl.com/4tz6aufs

Ever fumbled through your bag for your keys? That’s an interactive search: moving objects to uncover obscured visual information.

In a new paper from our lab, we asked: What determines where people choose to look first in these tasks?

Spoiler: effort matters.

🔗 doi.org/10.3758/s134...
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