Why is waldo so hard to find

In one study , researchers had their participants search for Waldo while recording their eye movements. What they found helped resolve the role of a particular kind of fixational eye movement in visual search. Science isn't just using Waldo to make discoveries about the human brain; it's also helped us understand how to find Waldo: Data scientist Randal S.

Olson computed the best search strategy for finding Waldo and shared it with the world on his blog. You will receive an email whenever this article is corrected, updated, or cited in the literature. You can manage this and all other alerts in My Account. This feature is available to authenticated users only. Get Citation Citation. Get Permissions. Chang, H. Cao, Y. Researchers recorded their eye movements while they searched.

What they found helped resolve the role of a particular kind of fixational eye movement in visual search. It could also help with machines that can see as well as humans. Science isn't just using Waldo to make discoveries about the human brain. It's also helped us understand how to find Waldo. Data scientist Randal S. Olson computed the best search strategy for finding Waldo. He shared it with the world on his blog. He found that Waldo rarely appears on the edges of the page.

And he found that Waldo never appears at the bottom right of the image. He created an optimized search path for finding Waldo. Do you want to optimize your home search? He also looked at the points where Waldo was most likely to be. We have neurons that are best at choosing colors, others for identifying shapes, and others for discerning and identifying patterns.

In the case of finding Waldo, before we begin scanning the page, we engage the neurons that are most adept at recognizing the distinct image of Waldo. For example, because Waldo has red on his clothes, we call upon the red neurons.

How do we actually find Waldo? This is when the two mental mechanisms work in unison. To better understand how it works, we are going to explain the difference between foveal attention and peripheral attention:.

Foveal attention is when the brain focuses our eyes specifically with the part that allows us to pick up small details. When we read, for example, we use this foveal focus to recognize and interpret the shapes of the letters. Scanning only captures our foveal attention.

However, the brain has to tell the eyes how they should keep on moving. This is based in peripheral attention.