Cognitive Processes in Audience Decision Making 123locate slot values in a text, they may fi ll empty schema slots with default values stored in their
memories.^190
Targeted vs. General Search
There are two types of task-driven search: targeted search and general search. When conducting a
targeted search, the audience tries to quickly locate a particular piece of information that will fi ll
a specifi c empty schema slot. When conducting a general search, the audience reads or listens to
longer passages hoping to fi nd information that will fi ll several empty schema slots. An example
of a targeted search is a consumer’s scanning document headings, indexes, and directories for a
keyword such as price in order to fi ll the “price slot” in her purchasing schema. Examples of audi-
ences conducting a general search include a trainee reading a potentially helpful chapter from a
training manual line by line or a nurse listening to a drug representative’s sales presentation without
interrupting.
Listeners necessarily conduct general searches unless they interrupt the speaker to request spe-cifi c information. Readers may conduct either type of search of the same document. A survey
of 201 instruction-manual users reports that only 15% of the users read the manual word for
word, cover to cover. The majority conducted either general or targeted searches. Forty-six percent
scanned the manuals for the major points and 35% used the manuals to fi nd specifi c instructions.
The remaining 4% of those surveyed never read them at all.^191
Viewers of images, like readers, may also conduct either type of search. In his classic eye-trackingexperiment, psychologist Alfred Yarbus selected a painting, “An Unexpected Visitor,” by the Rus-
sian artist Ilya Repin, and asked different questions of viewers while recording their eye movements
and fi xations. In the general search condition, viewers were allowed to view the painting as they
chose. In targeted search conditions, viewers were asked about the economic status, age, activities,
clothing, locations, and relationships of the people in the picture. The locus of the viewers’ eye fi xa-
tions varied widely according to the question Yarbus asked.^192
Figure 3.10 depicts some of the experiment’s results. It shows the painting and seven recordingsof eye movements made by the same viewer. Each recording lasted three minutes. The fi rst record-
ing (1) was of general search or free examination. The remaining six recordings were of targeted
search. Before making each of those remaining recordings, Yarbus asked the viewer to perform a
specifi c task: in the second recording (2) to estimate the economic status of the family; in (3) to
give the ages of the people; in (4) to guess what the family had been doing before the “unexpected
visitor” arrived; in (5) to remember the clothes the people wore; in (6) to remember the position
of the people and objects in the room; and in (7) to estimate how long the “unexpected visitor”
had been away.^193 As we can see, each task required the viewer to search for answers in different
parts of the painting. More recently, neuroscientists fi nd that brain activation patterns change just
as markedly as eye-fi xation patterns when viewers are asked to answer different questions while
viewing the same scene.^194
Targeted search of images is also associated with audience expertise. The greater the audience’sexpertise, the more targeted and effi cient their search for information can be. For example, the pat-
tern of eye movements expert radiologists produce as they make a diagnosis from an X-ray is far
more effi cient than that of novices.^195 Experts not only search images more effi ciently than novices,
they also search for different image elements. An eye-tracking study of art experts and novices fi nds
qualitative differences in the searches they conduct as they look at paintings.^196 Novices, untrained
in art, focus their attention on elements that indicate how accurately the paintings depict “objec-
tive” reality. In contrast, art experts focus on elements that indicate the composition, balance, and
symmetry of the paintings.