Citation

Godwin HJ, Menneer T, Cave KR, Helman S, Way RL, Donnelly N. Acta Psychol. 2010; 134(1): 79-84.

Affiliation

School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, Hampshire, United Kingdom. hayward.godwin@soton.ac.uk

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2009.12.009

PMID

20129597

Abstract

The probability of target presentation in visual search tasks influences target detection performance: this is known as the prevalence effect (Wolfe et al., 2005). Additionally, searching for several targets simultaneously reduces search performance: this is known as the dual-target cost (DTC: Menneer et al., 2007). The interaction between the DTC and prevalence effect was investigated in a single study by presenting one target in dual-target search at a higher level of prevalence than the other target (Target A: 45% Prevalence; Target B: 5% Prevalence). An overall DTC was found for both RTs and response accuracy. Furthermore, there was an effect of target prevalence in dual-target search, suggesting that, when one target is presented at a higher level of prevalence than the other, both the dual-target cost and the prevalence effect contribute to decrements in performance. The implications for airport X-ray screening are discussed.

Language: en