Abstract
In visual search tasks with multiple targets, the discovery of one target can hinder the detection of another target (i.e., "subsequent search misses", SSM; Cain, Adamo, & Mitroff, 2013, which are also known as "satisfaction of search" misses, SOS; Tuddenham, 1962). Although subsequent search misses have been extensively investigated in radiological search tasks, the effect also generalizes to non-medical tasks (Fleck, Samei, & Mitroff, 2010). In the present study, using eye tracking, we examined whether proofreading would be susceptible to SSM errors. Participants' eye movements were monitored while they proofread paragraphs containing 0, 1 or 2 typos. Using this task, we explored how the detection of a high-salience typo (i.e., an easy to detect typo, such as mjaor instead of major) affects subsequent search, as well as the processing and detection of a second low-salience typo (i.e., a difficult to detect typo, such as mitsake instead of mistake). The results revealed an SSM effect where accuracy for the low-salience typo was worse when a high-salience typo was detected relative to when that low-salience typo was presented alone in a paragraph. Further, the detection of the high-salience target lead to faster reaction times, faster time to first fixation on the low-salience target and faster trial termination after fixating the low-salience target. Also, after discovering the high-salience target, participants exhibited shorter fixation times on the low-salience target, as well as a lower probability of re-fixating the low-salience target. This pattern of results supports the satisfaction of search (SOS) explanation of SSM errors, by suggesting that the participants conducted a less thorough search following the detection of a high-salience typo. Finally, the results reveal that SSM errors can extend to proofreading, which is a complex task that involves searching for typos in a highly structured visual array.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018