An empirical investigation into the role of subjective prior probability in searching for potentially missing items.

ABSTRACT: There are many examples from the scientific literature of visual search tasks in which the length, scope and success rate of the search have been shown to vary according to the searcher's expectations of whether the search target is likely to be present. This phenomenon has major practical implications, for instance in cancer screening, when the prevalence of the condition is low and the consequences of a missed disease diagnosis are severe. We consider this problem from an empirical Bayesian perspective to explain how the effect of a low prior probability, subjectively assessed by the searcher, might impact on the extent of the search. We show how the searcher's posterior probability that the target is present depends on the prior probability and the proportion of possible target location

SUBMITTER: Fanshawe TR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4632580 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature