The multimodal optimum searching problem is an important essential subproblem which is commonly contained not only in a control problem but also widely in general decision problems. This paper surveys a theoretical and experimental study of a heuristic search method of the globally optimum point of a two-dimensional, multimodal, nonlinear, and unknown criterion function by using sighted, blindfolded, and blind subjects.
The main topics of the first half of the paper are basic (global) search points in the heuristic search, a shifting trend of the basic search point, omission of some trials of the basic search points, number of trials needed in the heuristic search, comparison of the search behaviors by sighted, blindfolded, and blind subjects, an extraction of heuristic search models, essential framework and appropriateness of the extracted models, deviation of number of trials due to the nationality of subjects, and so on.
The second and main half of the paper studies the concept formation process in the heuristic search behavior. “Concept” is defined and formulated in a newly-proposed form of “matrix structure of concept formation”. Five levels of a hierarchical concept-formation process are shown in the real example (point concept, line-segment concept, plane-segment concept, local-surface concept, and global-surface concept) of the heuristic search. In addition, a new approach of “figure-ground search” is applied to an analysis of the heuristic search behavior.