Confidence in incomplete visual search

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Perception
• Visual Neuroscience

Background:

• Visual search is crucial for daily tasks, but can be challenging under time pressure or with difficult targets.
• Accurate confidence estimation is vital for decision-making when information is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how confidence judgments are formed during visual search.
• To determine factors influencing confidence, such as target visibility and search difficulty.
• To examine how confidence choices affect search performance.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed visual search tasks, identifying small targets in stimuli.
• They selected the stimulus they felt more confident about.
• Target presence and stimulus size were manipulated to assess their impact.

Main Results:

• Search performance (hit rate) declined with increasing gaze-target distance.
• Confidence judgments favored smaller stimuli and responses indicating target presence.
• Chosen stimuli showed better performance, primarily due to a higher hit rate.

Conclusions:

• Confidence in visual search is significantly influenced by target visibility.
• The likelihood of overlooking a target also plays a role in confidence assessment.
• Confidence choices can improve search outcomes by guiding attention towards more promising stimuli.