Citation

Schwark J, Sandry J, Macdonald J, Dolgov I. Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 2012; 74(8): 1583-1589.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, MSC 3452, P.O. Box 30001, Las Cruces, NM, 88003-8001, USA, jschwark@nmsu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.3758/s13414-012-0354-4

PMID

22864899

Abstract

Many critical search tasks, such as airport and medical screening, involve searching for targets that are rarely present. These low-prevalence targets are associated with extremely high miss rates Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner (Nature, 435, 439-440, 2005). The inflated miss rates are caused by a criterion shift, likely due to observers attempting to equate the numbers of misses and false alarms. This equalizing strategy results in a neutral criterion at 50 % target prevalence, but leads to a higher proportion of misses for low-prevalence targets. In the present study, we manipulated participants' perceived number of misses through explicit false feedback. As predicted, the participants in the false-feedback condition committed a higher number of false alarms due to a shifted criterion. Importantly, the participants in this condition were also more successful in detecting targets. These results highlight the importance of perceived prevalence in target search tasks.

Language: en