College of Science
69 How does user control over cue presentation and removal influence the early quitting effect in visual search tasks and overall performance?
Idah Mbithi; Brennan Payne; and Jeff Moher
Faculty Mentor: Brennan Payne (Biology, University of Utah)
Abstract
We explored how user-controlled cues impact distractor-induced quitting in visual search. Participants completed visual searches in four conditions: addition cue, removal cue, automatic, and baseline. In some trials, the cues highlighted the target, while in others, they highlighted a non-target. In the addition cue condition, participants pressed a key to trigger a salient cue before responding. Conversely, the removal cue condition required participants to remove the cue with a keypress before responding. The automatic condition presented cues with the display, whereas the baseline condition included no cues. We replicated past findings showing evidence for early quitting behavior. Contrary to our expectations, usercontrolled cues did not reduce early quitting behavior and might have worsened it.
Summary
Background. Our research investigates how top-down control mechanisms can mitigate the early quitting effect in visual search tasks. The early quitting effect refers to the tendency of individuals to prematurely abandon a task when encountering distractions. In visual search, this effect can manifest when participants give up finding their target due to the presence of misleading or distracting cues. For example, Moher (2020) aimed to investigate whether task-irrelevant cues can produce an early quitting effect in three different experiments. In these experiments, on each trial, a salient distractor could or could not be present, and a target could or could not be present. These trial types were randomly intermixed independently so that each participant received an approximately equal number of trials in the different relevant combinations. They found that in target-present trials, participants had longer RTs when a salient distractor was present compared to when it was absent. On the other hand, target-absent trial RTs were shorter with salient distractors present. In addition, salient distractors increased errors in target-present trials. These findings suggest that salient distractors make participants reduce their quitting threshold in visual search. In a follow-up study, Moher et al. (under review) explored whether task-relevant salient cues can produce a similar early quitting effect on trials where the cues fail to highlight the target. They found that salient cues can indeed trigger early quitting on trials when those cues highlight a non-target.
Our study investigates the impact of user-controlled cues on performance, advancing understanding of their influence on visual search efficiency and task engagement. This research is particularly relevant in fields like radiology, where accurate visual searches are crucial for diagnosing medical conditions from images. By exa