Extending Effects of Salience and Payoffs on Stimulus Discrimination: An Experimental Simulation of Prescription Checking

Abstract

This study applied specific aspects of signal detection theory (target salience and decision payoffs) to examine the associations among measured attention and accuracy on a stimulus discrimination task patterned after prescription checking. 85 participants completed the d2 Test of Attention and were assigned to either a control condition with general task instructions or a payoff condition with points accumulated or lost based on ultimate performance. Participants checked simulated product order forms for clerical errors for 40 min. The stimulus set included errors that varied with respect to their ease of detection or salience. Analysis indicated that measured attention was related to performance accuracy and speed as expected. Also decision payoffs significantly increased accuracy on the discrimination task regardless of target salience and discrimination accuracy decreased as the salience of the stimulus mismatches decreased. Implications for real-world applications of signal detection theory to tasks such as prescription checking are explored.