[visionlist] Sunday fun: Preattentively finding 4-leaf clover?

[Prof. Michael Bach]

Dear vision community:

Here's a light & somewhat joyful question.

I was contacted by the press department of the German eye doctor association. They asked if I could explain an *anecdotal* observation of a 3-generation high ability to find four-leaf clover (Grandmother - mother - granddaughter).

I'm not aware of this specific phenomenon, and –of course– there is no real data. It would not belong to a preattentive / pop-out class in visual search in my book. Jeremy Wolfe (whom I contacted on this) considered it might be "(sort of) a search for 90 deg angles among 120 deg", and learned.

I’m aware that females fare better in visual search, because they have more inhibition of return (and there is an entertaining socio-biological explanation for that, if true) [Brown 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.11.029]. That might be part of it.

Any comments from you? Sounds like a fun topic, no?


Best regards,
Michael
-- 
Prof. Michael Bach   <https://michaelbach.de>