Publication Date
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Gary Burns (Committee Member), Paul Havig (Committee Member), Allen Nagy (Advisor), Allen Nagy (Committee Chair)
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Abstract
This study tested the hypothesis that the similarity of the cue and target in a visual search task is related to performance. Specifically, it was hypothesized that as the similarity between the cue and the target along the dimensions of stimulus contrast, spatial resolution and size increases, the amount of time that it takes to find a target among distractors decreases. Three experiments were performed to investigate the question. Experiments 1 and 2 employed a methodology that employed homogeneous search arrays where the contrast, spatial resolution and size of the elements were constant (high contrast, high spatial resolution and large size) and resulted in two small, statistically significant size effects. Experiment 3 was designed with heterogeneous search arrays for the task. This redesign produced larger performance differences that supported the similarity hypothesis. Differences in size produced the largest performance shifts, followed by differences in spatial resolution and differences in contrast producing smaller effects.
Page Count
86
Department or Program
Department of Psychology
Year Degree Awarded
2013
Copyright
Copyright 2013, all rights reserved. This open access ETD is published by Wright State University and OhioLINK.
