Expert camouflage-breakers can accurately localize search targets

Branch, Fallon; Lewis, Allison; Santana, Isabella; Hegdé, Jay

doi:10.1186/s41235-021-00290-5

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The veto effect is all the more striking in the cases of Experiments 1 and 2, where the subjects were expert camouflage-breakers. We have previously reported that expert camouflage-breakers are so skilled in their task that they can detect the camouflaged target even after brief viewing the stimulus, even as briefly as 50 ms, which does not permit extended scrutiny or eye movements ( Chen and Hegdé, 2012a ; Branch et al, 2021 ). In this specific sense, detecting the target is relatively easy for the expert subjects, so that the subjects could easily cross-check the prior information against the visual evidence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heuristic Vetoing: Top-Down Influences of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic Can Override the Bottom-Up Information in Visual Images

2022

Self Cite

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When making decisions under uncertainty, human subjects do not always act as rational decision makers, but often resort to one or more mental “shortcuts”, or heuristics, to arrive at a decision. How do such “top-down” processes affect real-world decisions that must take into account empirical, “bottom-up” sensory evidence? Here we use recognition of camouflaged objects by expert viewers as an exemplar case to demonstrate that the effect of heuristics can be so strong as to override the empirical evidence in favor of heuristic information, even though the latter is random. We provided the viewers a random number that we told them was the estimate of a drone reconnaissance system of the probability that the visual image they were about to see contained a camouflaged target. We then showed them the image. We found that the subjects’ own estimates of the probability of the target in the image reflected the random information they were provided, and ignored the actual evidence in the image. However, when the heuristic information was not provided, the same subjects were highly successful in finding the target in the same set of images, indicating that the effect was solely attributable to the availability of heuristic information. Two additional experiments confirmed that this effect was not idiosyncratic to camouflage images, visual search task, or the subjects’ prior training or expertise. Together, these results demonstrate a novel aspect of the interaction between heuristics and sensory information during real-world decision making, where the former can be strong enough to veto the latter. This ‘heuristic vetoing’ is distinct from the vetoing of sensory information that occurs in certain visual illusions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heuristic Vetoing: Top-Down Influences of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic Can Override the Bottom-Up Information in Visual Images

2022

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“…The image manipulations used for the ODDS scenes were modeled after those used by Hess et al ( 2016 ), who studied search for camouflaged targets. “Camouflage-breaking” can be considered a special instance of visual search wherein observers must identify objects of interest that blend into the background (Branch et al, 2021 ). The ODDS stimuli might be useful for understanding search behaviors in tasks that routinely require camouflage breaking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Oddity Detection in Diverse Scenes (ODDS) database: Validated real-world scenes for studying anomaly detection

Hout

Papesh²,

Masadeh³

et al. 2022

Behav Res

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Many applied screening tasks (e.g., medical image or baggage screening) involve challenging searches for which standard laboratory search is rarely equivalent. For example, whereas laboratory search frequently requires observers to look for precisely defined targets among isolated, non-overlapping images randomly arrayed on clean backgrounds, medical images present unspecified targets in noisy, yet spatially regular scenes. Those unspecified targets are typically oddities, elements that do not belong. To develop a closer laboratory analogue to this, we created a database of scenes containing subtle, ill-specified “oddity” targets. These scenes have similar perceptual densities and spatial regularities to those found in expert search tasks, and each includes 16 variants of the unedited scene wherein an oddity (a subtle deformation of the scene) is hidden. In Experiment 1, eight volunteers searched thousands of scene variants for an oddity. Regardless of their search accuracy, they were then shown the highlighted anomaly and rated its subtlety. Subtlety ratings reliably predicted search performance (accuracy and response times) and did so better than image statistics. In Experiment 2, we conducted a conceptual replication in which a larger group of naïve searchers scanned subsets of the scene variants. Prior subtlety ratings reliably predicted search outcomes. Whereas medical image targets are difficult for naïve searchers to detect, our database contains thousands of interior and exterior scenes that vary in difficulty, but are nevertheless searchable by novices. In this way, the stimuli will be useful for studying visual search as it typically occurs in expert domains: Ill-specified search for anomalies in noisy displays.

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“…If a target is sufficiently well-camouflaged, it can be all but impossible to find it even if it is in ‘plain sight’ [ 22 , 25 ]. Thus, searching for a camouflaged object is a special case of a visual search [ 25 , 26 ].…”

Section: Experiments 1: Characterization Of the Relationship Between ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By contrast, the task difficulty in conventional visual search stimuli, such as the aforementioned array with O- and Q-shapes, arises from having to distinguish the targets from the distractors and vice versa, and not from the difficulty of segmenting them. This is because both the target and the distractors are typically highly distinguishable from the background and from each other in conventional visual search stimuli [ 26 ].…”

Section: Experiments 1: Characterization Of the Relationship Between ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Satisfaction of Search Can Be Ameliorated by Perceptual Learning: A Proof-of-Principle Study

Park

Branch

Hegdé

2022

Vision

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When searching a visual image that contains multiple target objects of interest, human subjects often show a satisfaction of search (SOS) effect, whereby if the subjects find one target, they are less likely to find additional targets in the image. Reducing SOS or, equivalently, subsequent search miss (SSM), is of great significance in many real-world situations where it is of paramount importance to find all targets in a given image, not just one. However, studies have shown that even highly trained and experienced subjects, such as expert radiologists, are subject to SOS. Here, using the detection of camouflaged objects (or camouflage-breaking) as an illustrative case, we demonstrate that when naïve subjects are trained to detect camouflaged objects more effectively, it has the side effect of reducing subjects’ SOS. We tested subjects in the SOS task before and after they were trained in camouflage-breaking. During SOS testing, subjects viewed naturalistic scenes that contained zero, one, or two targets, depending on the image. As expected, before camouflage-training, subjects showed a strong SOS effect, whereby if they had found a target with relatively high visual saliency in a given image, they were less likely to have also found a lower-saliency target when one existed in the image. Subjects were then trained in the camouflage-breaking task to criterion using non-SOS images, i.e., camouflage images that contained zero or one target. Surprisingly, the trained subjects no longer showed significant levels of SOS. This reduction was specific to the particular background texture in which the subjects received camouflage training; subjects continued to show significant SOS when tested using a different background texture in which they did not receive camouflage training. A separate experiment showed that the reduction in SOS was not attributable to non-specific exposure or practice effects. Together, our results demonstrate that perceptual expertise can, in principle, reduce SOS, even when the perceptual training does not specifically target SOS reduction.

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Expert camouflage-breakers can accurately localize search targets

Cited by 3 publications

References 22 publications

Heuristic Vetoing: Top-Down Influences of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic Can Override the Bottom-Up Information in Visual Images

Heuristic Vetoing: Top-Down Influences of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic Can Override the Bottom-Up Information in Visual Images

The Oddity Detection in Diverse Scenes (ODDS) database: Validated real-world scenes for studying anomaly detection

Satisfaction of Search Can Be Ameliorated by Perceptual Learning: A Proof-of-Principle Study

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