Auxiliary Scene-Context Information Provided by Anchor Objects Guides Attention and Locomotion in Natural Search Behavior

Successful adaptive behavior requires efficient attentional and locomotive systems. Previous research has thoroughly investigated how we achieve this efficiency during natural behavior by exploiting prior knowledge related to targets of our actions (e.g., attending to metallic targets when looking for a pot) and to the environmental context (e.g., looking for the pot in the kitchen). Less is known about whether and how individual nontarget components of the environment support natural behavior. In our immersive virtual reality task, 24 adult participants searched for objects in naturalistic scenes in which we manipulated the presence and arrangement of large, static objects that anchor predictions about targets (e.g., the sink provides a prediction for the location of the soap). Our results show that gaze and body movements in this naturalistic setting are strongly guided by these anchors. These findings demonstrate that objects auxiliary to the target are incorporated into the representations guiding attention and locomotion.