Abstract
Visual search is an integral element of various professions, such as airport security screening, radiology, security surveillance, and military sonar operation, in which a single miss could have disastrous consequences. Conditions of visual search vary across different real-world tasks; for example, targets of varying prevalence and display rates can appear in dynamic or static environments. Despite research on how each condition influences task performance (Peltier & Becker, 2016; Wang & Sun, 2015), the extent to which they interact is unclear. It is therefore vital to investigate which search conditions/interactions affect target detection and how. This study randomly assigned 563 participants across eight conditions of a visual search task. Participants had to detect known targets, “T”s, within a display of distractors, offset “L”s (Peltier & Becker, 2016). Conditions varied between a dynamic (continuous horizontal scrolling) or static display type, a high (50%) or low (10%) target prevalence rate, and a fast (3.5 seconds) or slow (7 seconds) display speed. The current study did not detect a significant impact of search conditions on false alarm rates. Doubling the allowed search time produced a 55% increase in target detections, likely attributable to participants having increased time to process and inspect display items. Lower target prevalence resulted in decreased hit rates, consistent with the low prevalence effect (LPE). Notably, display type did not have a significant effect on hit rate, suggesting that both dynamic and static displays are vulnerable to the LPE. To mitigate LPE, successful methodologies applied to static searches in the past—such as artificially-increased prevalence rates (Wolfe et al., 2007) to increase target detections—should be considered for evaluation and potential implementation into dynamic conditions, in which such methods could be used to improve real-world visual search performance.