Elucidating Visual Search Behavior and Resulting Performance in Low Prevalence Dynamic Search
Abstract
Visual search is an essential element of various professions, such as airport security screening, radiology, and sonar monitoring, in which accurate and efficient task performance is vital. Visual search performance is dependent on specific search conditions, such as the frequency of targets, if targets are moving or stationary, and the duration of target visibility. Despite existing research on how conditions such as these individually influence search performance, the extent to which they interact-particularly target prevalence in different types of search environments-is unclear. Therefore, this study investigated performance and perceived cognitive demands of three common aspects of visual search: target prevalence (50 vs 10 ), display type (static still-image vs. dynamic continuous scroll), and display time (3.5 vs. 7 seconds). Participants (n = 556) recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk were randomly assigned to one of eight experimental conditions created from the combinations of these search conditions. Participants were tasked with detecting known targets, Ts, among a display of distractors, offset Ls, and subsequently rating their perceived condition-specific cognitive task workload via the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX). Though no significant interactions between search conditions on accuracy were found, condition-specific effects were present. Lower target prevalence produced decreased hit rates, replicating the Low Prevalence Effect (LPE) (Wolfe et al., 2007), across static and dynamic displays. Additionally, NASA-TLX ratings implies observer blindness to actual performance decrements in low target prevalence searches. The persistence of the LPE highlights the need for LPE-mitigation methods in both types of search environments.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 31, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1183743
Entities
People
- Chad Peltier
- Jeffrey Bolkhovsky
- Krystina Diaz
- Margaret Wise
- Sylvia Guillory
Organizations
- Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory