Jessica N. Goetz¹ (), Mark B. Neider¹; ¹University of Central Florida

Good-enough guidance proposes that search processes prioritize the most diagnostic feature (e.g., color is prioritized over shape) (for review, see Yu et al., 2023). Accordingly, the target template that guides attention is not a highly veridical representation of the target. For example, when searching for colored circles, target templates will be broadly tuned to a wide range of colors. We examined how good-enough guidance might be employed when searching for real-world objects compared to colored circles. Observers were asked to indicate the presence of a target object and we used our MATCH toolbox (Goetz & Neider, under review) to generate real-world object distractors (critical distractors) that were 15°, 30°, and 45° (color distance) away from the target object’s predominant color. On target absent trials, a distractor that matched the target’s shape, but was 90-270° away from the target object’s predominant color (rotated target distractor), replaced the target. Although we found more initial saccades to the critical distractor at every color distance for colored circles compared to real-world objects (all ps<.001), there was evidence of good-enough guidance for real-world objects. For both real-world objects and colored circles, we found most initial saccades were directed to the critical distractor and the proportion of initial saccades to the critical distractor decreased as color distance increased (all ps≤.001). A significant proportion of initial saccades were also directed to the rotated target distractor for real-world objects compared to colored circles (all ps<.001). Unlike colored circles, shape information can be used to guide search for real-world objects. Critically, for real-world objects at 45° of color distance, more initial saccades were directed to the rotated target distractor compared to the critical distractor (p<.001). Our data suggest that color provides good-enough guidance for real-world objects, but shape becomes more diagnostic when color is sufficiently dissimilar.