Mitigating the Low Prevalence Effect: Role of Removing Explicit “Target-Absent” Responses in Visual Search

Abstract

Target prevalence influences decision-making in visual search tasks, making it a crucial area of research. The low prevalence effect (LPE) occurs when lower target prevalence leads to higher miss rates, often due to premature target-absent decisions. This study investigated whether removing the need for an explicit “target-absent” response, using a go/no-go (GNG) response task, can mitigate the LPE by reducing premature decisions. Participants completed either a target-present/absent (PA) response task or a GNG task, with target prevalence set at high (50%) and low (5%) levels. In Experiment 1, the GNG task used an identical trial termination time across participants. In Experiment 2, the trial termination time was customized based on each participant’s performance threshold established prior to the main task. Results showed that the miss rate difference between prevalence conditions was smaller in the GNG task than in the PA task in both experiments. Moreover, customizing trial termination times also reduced the overall miss rate without increasing false alarms. Combining the GNG response type and customized trial termination offers a simple but effective method for improving target detection performance and mitigating the LPE in visual search.

Keywords

low prevalence effect go/no-go response visual search multiple-decision model decision-making

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