Abstract
In practical visual search fields, observers often encounter errors that result from an unknown number of targets, which may induce reduced accuracy and speed. Our current study addresses the potential enhancement of collaborative search efficiency as a dyad to mitigate such incurred search costs. Utilizing the capacity coefficient, we evaluated search efficiency and explored the interplay of task difficulty and termination rule in collaborative visual search. Our prediction that collaborative benefits increased with elevated task difficulty was not supported in Experiment 1, where participants were tasked with judging the presence of any target. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that dyads exhibited greater search efficiency during exhaustive searches for multiple targets with elevated task difficulty. Notably, our findings indicated an advantage in dyad searches compared to baseline predictions from individual searches. Our results underscored the significance of task difficulty and termination rules in leveraging human resources for improved collaborative visual search performance.
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Data availability
All data and analysis codes have been made publicly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) and can be accessed at https://osf.io/m69qg/.
Notes
In Experiment 2, participants were asked to report the number of targets accurately. Trials with three or four targets were labeled as “catch trials” to address an issue in the previous study conducted by Zhu et al. (2023), where participants may have prematurely ended their search upon spotting two targets.
Under the individual condition, participants in the dyads performed the task next to each other on their own. As a result, our design eliminates the possibility of the social facilitation effect, which suggests the mere presence of others could potentially enhance performance from a social cognition perspective (Guerin & Innes, 1982).
In Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, we also applied the analysis of assessment functions as reported in Hsieh et al., (2021) given that the capacity coefficient only included analyses of the correct responses. However, due to the high accuracy of the responses, we did not find quantitatively different patterns as depicted in capacity functions (Figs. 2 and 4). Considering that the assessment function also resulted in visual inspections with no statistical inferences (Townsend & Altieri, 2012), a discussion of assessment functions was therefore not included in our reported results.
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Funding
This work is supported by the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan (NSTC 112–2423-H-038–001, NSTC 109–2410-H-006 -049 -MY3, NSTC 107–2410-H-006 -055 -MY2, and NSTC 105–2410-H-006 -020 -MY2) and the Ministry of Education (Grant number: DP2-TMU-112-N08) to C.-T. Yang. H. Zhang would like to acknowledge support from self-determined research funds of CCNU from the colleges’ basic research and operation of MOE (CCNU22QN020, CCNU24JCPT038, CCNU24JC004), Chunhui Project of MOE (HZKY20220328), and the National Science Foundation of China (32300910, 62377019).
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PZ and CY conceived the experimental design and collected data. PZ and HZ performed the data analysis and prepared the initial draft. CY and HZ revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The experiment was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Department of Psychology, National Cheng Kung University (protocol code: NCKU HREC-E-109–257-2). All participants signed the consent form to the participate and for publication.
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Zhang, H., Zhu, PF. & Yang, CT. Group efficiency based on the termination rule in the multiple-targets visual search task. Psychon Bull Rev (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02558-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02558-5