Second Search Same as the First: The Benefit of Consistency in Multiple Target Search
Abstract
Real world visual search is a complicated process subject to a variety of unavoidable pressures (e.g., time limits). As such, increasing accuracy in critical searches (e.g., baggage screening) cannot always be done by improving the situation, and so improvement must come from the searcher. Here we demonstrate that consistency in time of search completion can predict accuracy in multiple-target search for professional (TSA Officers) and non-professional searchers. Participants were more likely to miss a second target after finding a first, but increased consistency reduced this likelihood and increased overall accuracy. Nicely, consistency offers a trainable mechanism to improve performance. Visual search experiments in the lab often require participants to find a single, welldefined target among distractors. However, real world search tasks are not always so clear-cut. For example, radiologists do not know what kind or how many abnormalities might be present, and airport baggage screeners do not know if a given bag contains water bottles, explosives, and/or other prohibited items. A key complexity to such searches is that they can contain more than one target during any given search, and such multiple target searches introduce unique problems. In particular, decades of research has demonstrated that when multiple targets are present, locating one can interfere with accuracy for locating additional targets; a phenomenon known as satisfaction of search (SOS; Tuddenham, 1962)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 15, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA582615
Entities
People
- Adam T. Biggs
- Stephen R. Mitroff
Organizations
- Duke University