University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2023 Aug 4;8(1):52. doi: 10.1186/s41235-023-00507-9.
In many real-life contexts, observers are required to search for targets that are rarely present (e.g. tumours in X-rays; dangerous items in airport security screenings). Despite the rarity of these items, they are of enormous importance for the health and safety of the public, yet they are easily missed during visual search. This is referred to as the prevalence effect. In the current series of experiments, we investigate whether unequal reward can modulate the prevalence effect, in a multiple target search task. Having first established the impact of prevalence (Experiment 1) and reward (Experiment 2) on how efficiently participants can find one of several targets in the current paradigm, we then combined the two forms of priority to investigate their interaction. An unequal reward distribution (where lower prevalence items are more rewarded; Experiment 3) was found to diminish the effect of prevalence, compared to an equal reward distribution (Experiment 4) as indicated by faster response times and fewer misses. These findings suggest that when combined with an unequal reward distribution, the low prevalence effect can be diminished.
在许多现实生活情境中，观察者需要搜索很少出现的目标（例如 X 光片中的肿瘤；机场安检筛查中的危险物品）。尽管这些物品很少见，但它们对公众的健康和安全至关重要，然而在视觉搜索中很容易被忽略。这被称为“流行率效应”。在当前一系列实验中，我们研究了在多项目标搜索任务中，非均等奖励是否可以调节流行率效应。在首次确定流行率（实验 1）和奖励（实验 2）对参与者在当前范式中找到多个目标之一的效率的影响后，我们将这两种形式的优先级结合起来研究它们的相互作用。与均等奖励分配（实验 4）相比，非均等奖励分配（低流行率物品的奖励更高；实验 3）发现会降低流行率的影响，表现为反应时间更快，漏检更少。这些发现表明，当与非均等奖励分配结合使用时，可以减轻低流行率效应。
