Lui Lisa, Pratt Jay, Lawrence Rebecca K
School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Level 7 Ian O'Connor Building (G40), Parklands Drive, Southport, Qld, 4222, Australia.
The University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2024 Feb;31(1):303-311. doi: 10.3758/s13423-023-02337-8. Epub 2023 Aug 14.
Visual search can be disrupted by irrelevant salient stimuli. Recently, Moher (Psychological Science, 31(1), 31-42, 2020) found salient distractors to speed search when a target was absent and increase error rates when the target was present. That is, distractors lowered search-quitting thresholds. Nonetheless, the salient distractors Moher used were present on 50% of all trials. Since distractor prevalence has been found to influence search processes more broadly, here, we aimed to test the effect of distractor prevalence on this distractor-quitting threshold effect (QTE). To do so, we conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 compared the performance of individuals in a search task where the target was present on 50% of trials across two distractor-prevalence conditions (25% vs. 75% prevalence). Experiment 2 followed the same procedure, except with a wider probability margin (10% vs. 90% prevalence). In Experiment 1, distractor prevalence did not modulate the QTE. Critically, in Experiment 2, the QTE was modulated. For high-prevalence distractors (90%), a QTE was observed. However, as low-prevalence distractors (10%) did not speed search, no QTE was observed. One potential reason no QTE was observed was because low-prevalence distractors have significantly greater attentional capture, which washed out speeded termination effects.
视觉搜索可能会受到无关的显著刺激的干扰。最近，莫赫尔（《心理科学》，第31卷第1期，31 - 42页，2020年）发现，当目标不存在时，显著的干扰项会加快搜索速度，而当目标存在时，会增加错误率。也就是说，干扰项降低了搜索终止阈值。尽管如此，莫赫尔使用的显著干扰项在所有试验中出现的比例为50%。由于干扰项的出现概率已被发现会更广泛地影响搜索过程，在此，我们旨在测试干扰项出现概率对这种干扰项终止阈值效应（QTE）的影响。为此，我们进行了两项实验。实验1比较了个体在搜索任务中的表现，在两种干扰项出现概率条件下（出现概率25%与75%），目标在50%的试验中出现。实验2遵循相同程序，只是概率范围更宽（出现概率10%与90%）。在实验1中，干扰项出现概率并未调节QTE。关键的是，在实验2中，QTE得到了调节。对于高出现概率的干扰项（90%），观察到了QTE。然而，由于低出现概率的干扰项（10%）并未加快搜索速度，所以未观察到QTE。未观察到QTE的一个潜在原因是，低出现概率的干扰项具有显著更强的注意力捕获能力，这消除了加速终止效应。
