Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2018
Capstone Advisor
Natalie Russo
Honors Reader
Bradley Seymour
Capstone Major
Psychology
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) is an experimental method in which participants are asked to detect a target within a sequence of stimuli, such as letters or numbers, in order to test the abilities of our visual systems. In previous RSVP studies, participants were above chance at recognizing a target at a very rapid rate of 13ms per item, even when given the target after presentation of the scene (Potter, Wyble, Hagmann, and McCourt, 2014). Researchers have also found that participants are more accurate in a single feature search condition than in a twofeature, or conjunction, condition in the spatial domain. In this study we aim to answer the following questions: a) at what speed is the visual system able to recognize and detect simple stimulus features? b) how does accuracy change with increased speed of presentation performance in typically developing adults? and c) does performance differ as a function of the difficulty of the search task?. To this end, we tasked participants to complete two different RSVP conditions. In the feature search condition, participants were tasked with detecting a violet letter target in a sequence of black letters. While in the conjunction search condition, we asked participants to detect a black letter in a sequence of violet letters and black numbers, a task that is much more difficult as it requires parallel processing and the ability to combine multiple features. Our results are consistent with past findings, extend these to the temporal domain, and examine the effects speed and difficulty of task have on accuracy.
Recommended Citation
O'Halloran, Shealyn, "Accuracy of Target Detection in Two RSVP Tasks" (2018). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1213.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1213
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