Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Psychology

Making choices that range from simple to complex and from important to inconsequential is something humans experience on a regular basis. This process is largely controlled by executive brain regions related to judgment and decision-making. Interestingly, such executive brain regions are associated with resting heart rate variability (HRV) defined as the temporal variation between heart beats and reflects cardiac vagal tone. If the areas of the brain responsible for decision making and HRV overlap, then resting HRV should predict better choice behaviors and performance. Adaptive choice visual search (ACVS) is a paradigm developed to capture the attentional control strategies observers deploy when making choices in dynamically shifting environments (Irons & Leber, 2018). In this dissertation, the primary aim was to explore the association between resting vagally mediated HRV and performance on the ACVS task. In addition, I sought to investigate if two psychological variables, i.) adaptive choice strategies and ii.) maximization, were independently associated with ACVS performance and how these variables moderated an HRV-ACVS association. Choice satisficing refers to the evaluation of selections in a choice situation that simply meet a threshold of acceptability (Schwartz, et al., 2002). I predicted that those with higher HRV would have faster reaction times (RT), utilize more optimal search strategies, and demonstrate qualities of maximizers - where individuals seek out the best available choice from all of the options available to them - based on their scores on the Maximization Scale (Schwartz, et al., 2002). I also hypothesized that switching between attentional sets incurs a response time cost, and that there will be lower switching costs among those with higher HRV. In my study, vagally mediated HRV was collected continuously throughout the experiment. Participants (N = 62; n = 34 males, n = 17 ethnic minorities, mean age = 20.84 years (SD = 2.86)) first complet (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Julian Thayer PhD (Advisor); Michael Vasey PhD (Committee Chair); Andrew Leber PhD (Committee Member); Kevin Passino PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Physiological Psychology; Psychology

Master of Science in Engineering (MSEgr), Wright State University, 2014, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering

Due to an abundance of data and dynamic nature of tasks, challenges with information retrieval in surveillance and target identification tasks have risen in today's Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) community. In this study, two variables, Area of Coverage and Amount of Activity (AOC/ACT), are manipulated to study their effects on the number of Watch Windows an observer can monitor. This research describes the analyst's task model, and explains how the level of AOC/ACT and number of Watch Windows affects the analyst's cognitive load. Results showed a significant difference in performance and physiological indicators of workload between high AOC/ACT conditions and low AOC/ACT conditions. Confidence levels were higher with low AOC/ACT conditions, while NASA-TLX ratings decreased. A linear correlation was exhibited between the number of Watch Windows and the number of fixations. The results show that these variables can be manipulated in tasking to maintain appropriate levels of cognitive workload.

Committee: Mary Fendley Ph.D. (Advisor); Subhashini Ganapathy Ph.D. (Committee Member); Alan Boydstun Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Engineering

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2013, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology MS

This study tested the hypothesis that the similarity of the cue and target in a visual search task is related to performance. Specifically, it was hypothesized that as the similarity between the cue and the target along the dimensions of stimulus contrast, spatial resolution and size increases, the amount of time that it takes to find a target among distractors decreases. Three experiments were performed to investigate the question. Experiments 1 and 2 employed a methodology that employed homogeneous search arrays where the contrast, spatial resolution and size of the elements were constant (high contrast, high spatial resolution and large size) and resulted in two small, statistically significant size effects. Experiment 3 was designed with heterogeneous search arrays for the task. This redesign produced larger performance differences that supported the similarity hypothesis. Differences in size produced the largest performance shifts, followed by differences in spatial resolution and differences in contrast producing smaller effects.

Committee: Allen Nagy PhD (Committee Chair); Gary Burns PhD (Committee Member); Paul Havig PhD (Committee Member); Allen Nagy PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Aerospace Engineering; Behavioral Sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Communication; Experimental Psychology; Experiments; Industrial Engineering; Information Science; Information Systems; Information Technology; Medical Imaging; Operations Research; Psychology; Quantitative Psychology; Scientific Imaging; Systems Design

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2016, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology PhD

When people look through the environment their eyes are guided in part by what they have recently seen. This phenomenon, referred to as visual priming, is studied in the laboratory through manipulations of stimulus repetition. Typically, in search tasks, response times are speeded when the same target is repeated relative to when it is changed (e.g., Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). Although priming is thought to be based on a memory mechanism in the visual system, there is a debate in the literature as to whether such a mechanism is driven by relatively early (e.g., feature-based accounts) or later (e.g., episodic memory accounts) processing. Across three experiments, this dissertation utilized a computational modeling framework (Systems Factorial Technology; Townsend & Nozawa, 1995) to directly compare early and later accounts of priming and determine when visual priming is processed within the visual system in both feature and conjunctive search tasks. Specifically, priming was assessed in terms of its temporal relation (i.e., parallel or serial) to a relatively early process (the processing of conspicuity) and a relatively later process (the processing of Rewards, Experiment 1a; the processing of Word Cues, Experiments 1b and 2) in the visual system. The results suggest that the priming manipulation is processed in parallel with the conspicuity and word cue manipulations within both singleton (Experiments 1a and 1b) and conjunctive (Experiment 2) search. This supports accounts of priming as an early process and suggest that models of priming as a later process within feature or conjunctive search should be rejected. Further, these results also provide evidence to suggest word cues are processed at early stages of visual processing. This supports models of visual processing that suggest high-level representations can modulate the earliest levels of the visual system. Together, these findings provide some of the strongest evidence about the temporal process (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joseph Houpt Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Assaf Harel Ph.D. (Committee Member); Scott Watamaniuk Ph.D. (Committee Member); Alan Pinkus Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Experimental Psychology; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2009, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology PhD

The present study tested the hypothesis that three visual pathways (i.e. parvocellular, magnocellular, and koniocellular pathways) may influence the degree of dual-task interference using dual-task methodology. The magnocellular pathway consists of feature-coding mechanisms that are sensitive to transients and motion, and is thought to process information about the locations and movements of objects. The parvocellular pathway consists of feature-coding mechanisms that are sensitive to red-green and brightness information, while the koniocellular pathway consists of feature-coding mechanisms that are sensitive to blue-yellow chromatic information. Both the parvocellular and the koniocellular pathway are thought to process information useful for identifying objects. The hypothesis predicted that engaging in two search tasks that were mediated by feature-coding mechanisms in two different pathways would result in less dual-task interference in performance than two tasks that were mediated by feature-coding mechanisms in the same pathway. Magnocellular stimuli were defined by brief luminance transients and motion, and parvocellular and koniocellular stimuli were defined by color. The most interference was observed for task pairs that were different in nature and mediated in one pathway. Two tasks mediated by the two different pathways resulted in a small interference, while two identical task pairs mediated by one pathway resulted in no dual-task interference. No significant negative contingency was observed in any task pair. Dual-task interference consistent with a sampling model (e.g. Bonnel et al., 1992) and an independence model (e.g. Morrone et al., 2002 and 2004) were observed. No task pairs produced dual-task interference consistent with the prediction of a switching model (e.g. Duncan, 1996).

Committee: Allen Nagy PhD (Committee Chair); Scott Watamaniuk PhD (Committee Member); Pamela Tsang PhD (Committee Member); Michael Hennessy PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Psychology

How many items can we store in visual working memory while simultaneously conducting a visual search? Previous research has proposed that only one visual working memory representation can be activated to influence attention directly, whereas other visual working memory representations are accessory items which have little influence on visual selection. However recent findings have suggested otherwise, specifically that two visual working memory representations can capture attention and interfere with concurrent visual search (Chen & Du, 2017). Across a series of studies, I investigated these findings further, and tested what the capacity of visual working memory is during visual search. The results from these studies suggest that multiple items held in visual working memory can capture attention and interfere with visual search. Specifically, I find that the capacity may be capped at two or three representations that can be simultaneously activated during search to guide attention, and that simplifying memoranda to a single feature does not increase capacity.

Committee: Brooke Macnamara PhD (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Short PhD (Committee Member); Robert Greene PhD (Committee Member); Fey Parrill PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2019, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology PhD

Real-world visual search differs significantly from the laboratory task. One distinct feature is that most targets in real-world visual search are low prevalence. Considering the important practical connections between the laboratory study and applied research, there has been a resurgence in exploring prevalence effects on visual search performance, especially the effect that targets are more likely to be missed when they have low prevalence. Though there is a consensus that target misses are due to a liberal criterion, previous studies failed to consider the potentiality of optimal performance from the perspective of Signal Detection Theory, which also predicts a the liberal criterion shift. Moreover, previous decision making literature has demonstrated that observers subjectively weighted the probability based on the information communications they were given (i. e. the description-experience gap), motivates the current study to explore how target probability communications influence search performance. To explore the hypothesis of optimal performance and the influence of probability communications, the current research assessed observers' performance from two aspects: behavioral performance and eye movements. The results indicated that with a high penalty on miss errors, observers' criteria were more liberal toward “target-present” responses. However, the performance was not optimal as expected. The manipulation of information indicated visual search was affected by the way the target prevalence information was given to observers. Specifically, when target prevalence was low, learning prevalence from experience resulted in the belief in more targets and longer search time before quitting compared to the contexts in which observers had been explicitly informed about the target probability. The observed discrepancy narrowed with increased prevalence and reversed when target prevalence was high. There was no clear evidence for the same discrepancy in item fix (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joseph W. Houpt Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Valerie Shalin Ph.D. (Committee Member); Scott Watamaniuk Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christopher Myers Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychobiology

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2019, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology MS

The traditional method of maintaining spatial awareness through visual displays can cause visual system overload and lead to performance decrements. This study examined the benefits of spatialized auditory, tactile, and audio-tactile cues for maintaining awareness as a method of enhancing visual search performance. I examined visual search performance in an immersive, dynamic, three-dimensional (360-degree), virtual reality environment with no cues, spatialized auditory cues, degraded spatialized auditory cues, spatialized tactile cues, spatialized audio-tactile cues, and degraded spatialized auditory with tactile cues. Results indicated a significant reduction in visual search time from the no-cue condition when any cues were presented. The tactile display did not provide an additional benefit when combined with the auditory display. The results of this study can inform the creation of multimodal displays appropriate to specific operational settings, such as including auditory displays in dynamic settings or including tactile displays when the visual target is behind the operator, which will improve visual search performance, increase mission effectiveness, and possibly save lives.

Committee: Joseph Houpt Ph.D. (Advisor); Brian Simpson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Scott Watamaniuk Ph.D. (Committee Member); John Christopher Brill Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Experimental Psychology; Experiments; Psychology; Quantitative Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2016, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology PhD

The current study simultaneously examined the potentiality of a magnocellular attentional advantage and the competition between top-down and bottom-up processing on attention during visual search as measured by covert and overt visual attention. Specifically, the study tested two opposing views of the competition between top-down and bottom-up processing. The contingent involuntary orienting hypothesis (Folk, Remington, & Johnston, 1992), states that goal directed search is not affected by target-irrelevant stimuli. In contrast, the distractor interference paradigm (Theeuwes, 1994), states that goal directed search can be affected by target-irrelevant stimuli if more salient than the rest of the search array. The study utilized a search array of contrast-equated orientation and spatial frequency modulated Gabor patches to preferentially activate the magnocellular and parvocellular visual streams in order to test for a magnocellular attentional advantage. Participants were asked to find a singleton target Gabor patch amongst a field of distractor Gabor patches. The results were mixed. Top-down search for a spatial frequency singleton provided support for the distractor interference paradigm while top-down search for an orientation singleton provided support for the contingent involuntary orientating hypothesis. These mixed results suggest top-down versus bottom-up search is more complicated than these two theories suggest. By demonstrating the effect of a target-irrelevant distractor on response time and accuracy, I provide that a bottom-up attentional priority exists when performing a top-down search for an orientation singleton, but not for a spatial frequency singleton. Additionally, the current study could find no evidence for a magnocellular attentional advantage.

Committee: Scott Watamaniuk Ph.D. (Advisor); Joseph Houpt Ph.D. (Committee Member); Alan Pinkus Ph.D. (Committee Member); Valerie Shalin Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering (MSBME), Wright State University, 2016, Biomedical Engineering

Missed anomalies have the potential to cause detrimental effects in the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) domain. One possible cause of these missed anomalies is that cognitive processing may not reach conscious awareness and may only be perceived by the unconscious mind. Identification of correlates of these unconscious processes could provide an insight into potential missed targets. The present study explored missed anomalies in a visual search task and the possibility of unconscious awareness. Eye metrics were recorded and a “Detection Threshold Model” was created and validated with a nominal logistic regression model, in order to characterize the search patterns and eye metrics of detection, non-detection, and possible unconscious detection. Results indicated that eye metrics of fixation count, fixation duration, mean saccade length, and backtrack rate predicted detections and non-detections with an overall accuracy of about 90%. Additionally, gaze plots of possible unconscious detections revealed signature search patterns of detection.

Committee: Mary Fendley Ph.D. (Advisor); Rik Warren Ph.D. (Committee Member); Nasser Kashou Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Biomedical Engineering; Biomedical Research; Engineering; Industrial Engineering; Physiological Psychology

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2014, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology MS

Previous research has been divided on whether or not multisensory cues can speed visual search relative to their component unisensory cues alone. Some studies (e.g., Mateo et al., 2012) found reaction times for multisensory cues were not faster than the RT of the faster component unisensory cue alone. Other studies (e.g., Oskarsson et al., 2012) found the multisensory cue to be faster than either unisensory cue alone (i.e., multisensory enhancement). This study aimed to determine whether the relative effectiveness match between auditory and tactile cues affects multisensory enhancement on a visual search task. In Experiment 1 we estimated for each subject three auditory cue inaccuracy values that corresponded to RTs equal to, 25% faster than, and 25% slower than tactile cue RTs. In Experiment 2 we combined each estimated auditory cue inaccuracy with a tactile cue to produce the multisensory conditions. We then compared RTs across the three different multisensory conditions. Our results suggest enhancement was more likely to occur when the auditory and tactile cues were closely matched in effectiveness and interference was more likely to occur when auditory and tactile cues were not closely matched. Although additional work will be needed to determine whether the interference was due to ineffective cues, poor strategies by the subjects, or a combination of thee factors, our results seem to demonstrate the utility of providing two equally-matched cues as a strategy to speed visual search.

Committee: Robert Gilkey Ph.D. (Advisor); Scott Watamaniuk Ph.D. (Committee Member); Brian Simpson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Experimental Psychology; Psychology

Master of Science in Engineering (MSEgr), Wright State University, 2009, Industrial and Human Factors Engineering

The attribute of depth has been shown to provide saliency or conspicuity for items in a visual search task. Novel displays that present information in real physical depth offer potential benefits. Previous research has studied depth in visual search but depth was mostly realized without real physical separation of display elements. This study aimed to better understand the effects of real physical depth and eccentricity on visual search in a depth display. Through this understanding, we can appropriately utilize this new technology. An experiment was conducted to test four hypotheses regarding how depth, eccentricity, target feature, and screen location would affect target acquisition speed. An ANOVA of the experiment's data suggests that physical depth can enhance the target search speed, especially when combined with other attributes for guiding attention. Visual search performance can be hampered when eccentricity increases for the target item. In addition, there seem to be interactions between target attributes and eccentricity.

Committee: Yan Liu PhD (Advisor); Paul Havig PhD (Committee Member); Misty Blue PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Engineering; Experiments; Industrial Engineering; Information Systems; Psychology

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2007, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology MS

Previous research on aurally-aided visual search has repeatedly shown a significant reduction in response times when displaying 3D auditory cues. However, the vast majority of this research has only examined searches for static (non-moving) targets in static visual environments. In the present study, visual search performance in both static and dynamic (moving) visual environments is examined with and without virtual 3D auditory cues. In both static and dynamic environments, and for all observers, visual search times were significantly reduced when auditory spatial cues were displayed. Auditory cues provided the largest benefits when the target initially appeared at farther eccentricities and on the horizontal axis. General practice effects were observed, but 3D auditory cues were immediately effective with little or no time needed for learning. Overall, the results suggest a similar and consistent performance benefit offered by 3D audio for both static and dynamic environments.

Committee: Scott Watamaniuk (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology, Experimental

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

Target search is a common objective in military operations involving UAVs. The development of visual search training techniques could improve target search efficiency and reduce mission cost. In this study, target, cue and visual scanning training techniques were evaluated using the FlightGear UAV flight simulator. Participants were assigned at random to one of four training conditions including a control training condition. In a target training condition, participants learned how to discriminate a target military fuel truck from other types of trucks. In the cue condition, participants learned how to discriminate a cue (i.e., military hangar) from other types of non-cue hangars. In the visual scanning condition, participants were asked to search for the cue located in different parts of the screen. In the control condition, participants learned how to discriminate a military antenna from other types of antennae. The participants also received UAV navigation and, where applicable, secondary task trainings. The skills achieved in the training were tested during a 30-minute UAV flight. The participants were asked to fly the plane along the route, detect and take pictures of the targets. One half of participants, in addition to the primary task, were asked to perform a secondary task, which simulated a military radio frequency switching task. It was predicted that target, cue, and visual scanning conditions would result in superior target detection performance in terms of multiple performance metrics, when compared to the control condition. The secondary task was expected to impact performance negatively in all conditions. Also, participants in the target, cue and visual scan training conditions were expected to experience lower subjective workload and stress measured by NASA-TLX and DSSQ questionnaires respectively. The results showed that overall target and cue training conditions produced superior target search performances when compared to the control condition. Th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gerald Matthews PhD (Committee Chair); Chung-Yiu Chiu PhD (Committee Member); Michael Riley PhD (Committee Member); Joel Warm PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2006, Electrical Engineering

I present a new method of visual search for objects that include straight lines. This is usually the case for machine-made objects. I describe existing machine vision search methods and show how my method of visual search gives better performance on objects that have straight lines. Inspired from human vision, a two-step process is used. First, straight line segments are detected in an image and characterized by their length, mid-point location, and orientation. Second, hypotheses that a particular straight line segment belongs to a known object are generated and tested. The set of hypotheses is constrained by spatial relationships in the known objects. I discuss implementation of my method and its performance and limitations in real and synthetic images. The speed and robustness of my method make it immediately applicable to many machine vision problems.

Committee: Christos Papachristou (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Science