How prevalence expectations and feedback impact decision-making in person searches

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Factors
• Forensic Science

Background:

• Searching for missing persons involves sustained attention and scanning for unfamiliar faces.
• Low prevalence of missing persons can lead to low expectations, impacting search performance.
• Understanding expectation and feedback effects is crucial for optimizing real-world search efforts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how manipulated prevalence expectations and performance feedback influence visual search for unfamiliar faces.
• To examine the impact of these factors on search behavior and accuracy over time.
• To determine the effectiveness of feedback in aligning expectations with actual target prevalence.

Main Methods:

• A visual search task was employed using unfamiliar target faces.
• Prevalence expectations were manipulated (40% vs. 2%).
• Trial-level performance feedback was manipulated (present vs. absent).

Main Results:

• Without feedback, high-prevalence expectations led to more false alarms and earlier search termination compared to low-prevalence expectations.
• Feedback eliminated the influence of prevalence expectations on search behavior.
• Feedback improved participants' ability to align their expectations with the true prevalence rate.

Conclusions:

• Prevalence expectations alone had a limited impact on visual search performance for missing persons.
• Performance feedback significantly enhanced participants' ability to adjust their search strategy based on actual target prevalence.
• Feedback is a critical factor in improving the effectiveness of search efforts for low-prevalence targets.