In foraging tasks, multiple targets must be found within a single display. The targets can be of one or more types, typically surrounded by numerous distractors. Visual attention has traditionally been studied with single target search tasks, but adding more targets to the search display results in several additional measures of interest, such as how attention is oriented to different features and locations over time. We measured foraging among five age groups: Children in Grades 1, 4, 7, and 10, as well as adults, using both simple feature foraging tasks and more challenging conjunction foraging tasks, with two target types per task. We assessed participants’ foraging organization, or systematicity when selecting all the targets within the foraging display, on four measures: Intertarget distance, number of intersections, best-r, and the percentage above optimal path length (PAO). We found that foraging organization increases with age, in both simple feature-based foraging and more complex foraging for targets defined by feature conjunctions, and that feature foraging was more organized than conjunction foraging. Separate analyses for different target types indicated that children’s, and to some extent adults’, conjunction foraging consisted of two relatively organized foraging paths through the display where one target type is exhaustively selected before the other target type is selected. Lastly, we found that the development of foraging organization is closely related to the development of other foraging measures. Our results suggest that measuring foraging organization is a promising avenue for further research into the development of visual orienting.

在觅食任务中，必须在单个显示器中找到多个目标。目标可以是一种或多种类型，通常被许多干扰物包围。视觉注意力传统上是通过单目标搜索任务来研究的，但是在搜索显示中添加更多目标会导致几个额外的兴趣度量，例如随着时间的推移注意力如何定向到不同的特征和位置。我们测量了五个年龄组的觅食情况：1、4、7 和 10 年级的儿童以及成人，使用简单的特征觅食任务和更具挑战性的联合觅食任务，每个任务有两个目标类型。我们在四个指标上评估了参与者在选择觅食展示中的所有目标时的觅食组织或系统性：目标间距离、交叉点数量、最佳-r，以及高于最佳路径长度 (PAO) 的百分比。我们发现，在简单的基于特征的觅食和由特征连接定义的目标的更复杂的觅食中，觅食组织随着年龄的增长而增加，并且特征觅食比连接觅食更有组织。对不同目标类型的单独分析表明，儿童以及在某种程度上成人的联合觅食由两条相对有组织的通过显示器的觅食路径组成，其中一种目标类型在选择另一种目标类型之前被彻底选择。最后，我们发现觅食组织的发展与其他觅食措施的发展密切相关。我们的结果表明，测量觅食组织是进一步研究视觉定向发展的有前途的途径。