@article{ref1,
title="The confirmation and prevalence biases in visual search reflect separate underlying processes",
journal="Journal of experimental psychology: human perception and performance",
year="2020",
author="Walenchok, Stephen C. and Goldinger, Stephen D. and Hout, Michael C.",
volume="46",
number="3",
pages="274-291",
abstract="Research by Rajsic, Wilson, and Pratt (2015, 2017) suggests that people are biased to use a target-confirming strategy when performing simple visual search. In 3 experiments, we sought to determine whether another stubborn phenomenon in visual search, the low-prevalence effect (Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner, 2005), would modulate this confirmatory bias. We varied the reliability of the initial cue: For some people, targets usually occurred in the cued color (high prevalence). For others, targets rarely matched the cues (low prevalence). High cue-target prevalence exacerbated the confirmation bias, indexed via search response times (RTs) and eye-tracking measures. Surprisingly, given low cue-target prevalence, people remained biased to examine cue-colored letters, even though cue-colored targets were exceedingly rare. At the same time, people were more fluent at detecting the more common, cue-mismatching targets. The findings suggest that attention is guided to &quot;confirm&quot; the more available cued target template, but prevalence learning over time determines how fluently objects are perceptually appreciated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0096-1523",
doi="10.1037/xhp0000714",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000714"
}