A main question in Wieske’s work is how people select those things in the environment that they want to select and why is it that sometimes certain things and objects automatically draw attention and eyes. Using a modified visual search paradigm and eye movement recordings, Wieske has demonstrated an important role for time in determining how much control observers have available. For example, when observers respond quickly, salient stimuli are prioritized in processing regardless of their task relevance. However, as time passes salience degrades and the representation changes. It becomes more sophisticated as other information, such as prior knowledge and observer goals, is integrated.
In her work, Wieske has discovered that search and selection performance 1) depends on the amount of time observers take to deploy attention and move their eye movements to a location; 2) does not always depend on observers’ awareness; 3) depends on whether there is a relation of symmetry between a target and surrounding elements; 4) benefits from a short-term visual memory representation, and 5) is automatically modulated by random reward feedback.
Other interests of Wieske include visual search, spatial cueing of attention via gaze-direction or arrows, eye movements and reward, shared task representation in joint attention, and individual differences looking at how special populations such as hearing-impaired and deaf individuals process incoming visual information.
ORCID: 0000-0001-6760-2346