Citation

Godwin HJ, Menneer T, Riggs CA, Cave KR, Donnelly N. Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 2014; 77(1): 150-159.

Affiliation

School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, Hampshire, SO17 1BJ, UK, hayward.godwin@soton.ac.uk.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.3758/s13414-014-0762-8

PMID

25214305

Abstract

Previous research has shown that during visual search tasks target prevalence (the proportion of trials in which a target appears) influences both the probability that a target will be detected, and the speed at which participants will quit searching and provide an 'absent' response. When prevalence is low (e.g., target presented on 2 % of trials), participants are less likely to detect the target than when prevalence is higher (e.g., 50 % of trials). In the present set of experiments, we examined perceptual failures to detect low prevalence targets in visual search. We used a relative prevalence search task in order to be able to present an overall 50 % target prevalence and thereby prevent the results being accounted for by early quitting behavior. Participants searched for two targets, one of which appeared on 45 % of trials and another that appeared on 5 % of trials, leaving overall target prevalence at 50 %. In the first experiment, participants searched for two dissimilar targets; in the second experiment, participants searched for two similar targets. Overall, the results supported the notion that a reduction in prevalence primarily influenced perceptual failures of identification, rather than of selection. Together, these experiments add to a growing body of research exploring how and why observers fail to detect low prevalence targets, especially in real-world tasks in which some targets are more likely to appear than others.

Language: en