ASSOCIATION BETWEEN AGE, OPENNESS AND TRAVEL TIME IN FORAGING
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2023-05-01
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en
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Foraging is a type of visual search, which is a fundamental task in our daily life. When observers forage, they are searching for multiple instances of a single target. We make decisions in everyday life based on our tendency to explore or exploit. The choice between exploiting or exploring defines the foraging behaviour when moving from area to area to collect items. The Marginal Value Theorem (MVT) predicts that observers will stay longer in an area when it is profitable, when the distances between areas are not long and when the environment is less profitable as a whole. Because decision making can’t solely be based on the MVT, this research aimed to find other factors that play a role in foraging. Based on previous research, the factors age, openness to experience as a personality trait and travel time could be associated to foraging. To investigate whether there was an association between these factors, participants took part in a foraging experiment combined with a personality questionnaire. In the experiment observers were asked to collect targets amongst distractors in multiple instances, where they were free to move on to the next area. Older adults tended to be less open to experience than younger adults. There was no association found between the tendency of openness to experience, the time it took to leave an area and explorative or exploitative behaviour in current study. The difference between older and younger adults helps us identify differences in tendencies of openness to experience. Because research on foraging can provide us information about human orientation in visual environments that we can apply in multiple fields it would be beneficial to keep investigating the association of age, openness and travel time.
Keywords: Foraging, visual search, age, openness to experience, multiple targets, explore, exploit, travel time
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen