Cue relevance drives early quitting in visual search.
Cogn Res Princ Implic
; 9(1): 54, 2024 Aug 26.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39183257
ABSTRACT
Irrelevant salient distractors can trigger early quitting in visual search, causing observers to miss targets they might otherwise find. Here, we asked whether task-relevant salient cues can produce a similar early quitting effect on the subset of trials where those cues fail to highlight the target. We presented participants with a difficult visual search task and used two cueing conditions. In the high-predictive condition, a salient cue in the form of a red circle highlighted the target most of the time a target was present. In the low-predictive condition, the cue was far less accurate and did not reliably predict the target (i.e., the cue was often a false positive). These were contrasted against a control condition in which no cues were presented. In the high-predictive condition, we found clear evidence of early quitting on trials where the cue was a false positive, as evidenced by both increased miss errors and shorter response times on target absent trials. No such effects were observed with low-predictive cues. Together, these results suggest that salient cues which are false positives can trigger early quitting, though perhaps only when the cues have a high-predictive value. These results have implications for real-world searches, such as medical image screening, where salient cues (referred to as computer-aided detection or CAD) may be used to highlight potentially relevant areas of images but are sometimes inaccurate.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Atención
/
Señales (Psicología)
Límite:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Cogn Res Princ Implic
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Estados Unidos
Pais de publicación:
Reino Unido