Training and Transfer of Training in Rapid Visual Search for Camouflaged Targets

Abstract

Previous examinations of search under camouflage conditions have reported that performance improves with training and that training can engender near perfect transfer to similar, but novel camouflage-type displays [1]. What remains unclear, however, are the cognitive mechanisms underlying these training improvements and transfer benefits. On the one hand, improvements and transfer benefits might be associated with higher-level overt strategy shifts, such as through the restriction of eye movements to target-likely (background) display regions. On the other hand, improvements and benefits might be related to the tuning of lower-level perceptual processes, such as figure-ground segregation. To decouple these competing possibilities we had one group of participants train on camouflage search displays and a control group train on non-camouflage displays. Critically, search displays were rapidly presented, precluding eye movements. Before and following training, all participants completed transfer sessions in which they searched novel displays. We found that search performance on camouflage displays improved with training. Furthermore, participants who trained on camouflage displays suffered no performance costs when searching novel displays following training. Our findings suggest that training to break camouflage is related to the tuning of perceptual mechanisms and not strategic shifts in overt attention.

On the Hunt: Searching for Poorly Defined Camouflaged Targets

“…Analysis of eye movement data suggested that these reaction time improvements were subserved by improvements in both search guidance and decision making mechanisms (improvements in both Search and Verification Times). The latter finding is consistent with a number of previous studies [ 2 , 22 ] and may suggest that with increased task familiarity comes an improvement in segmentation processes. With practice, observers are better able to extract target-related information from the background region.…”

“…Size of the search target was also manipulated, with smaller targets resulting in a more difficult search task. Consistent with previous studies by Neider and colleagues [ 2 , 6 , 8 ], we predicted that accuracy and reaction times (RT) would worsen with increasing target difficulty, but that participants might show improvements in those measures as familiarity of the tasks increased (based on training improvements reported in [ 6 , 8 , 22 ]). Additionally, consistent with previous studies of search for well-defined targets compared to categorically defined targets [ 11 , 13 ], we predicted that overall performance would be better in Experiment 1 when participants were provided with a perfect visual template for each search trial compared to Experiment 2, when participants could not search from a perfect template.…”

Towards the automated localisation of targets in rapid image-sifting by collaborative brain-computer interfaces

“…However, this was not done on an RSVP task with real-world stimuli, but rather on a series of simple stimuli (a number of circles arranged within a larger circle) that were sequentially and randomly flashed for 2 seconds each. While this technique could, in principle, be extended to the real-world stimuli used in this paper, it is unlikely that it could work when images are presented at the high speeds used in RSVP, as there are previous reports of saccades being suppressed at such rates [ 35 , 36 ].…”