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Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed?

The act of looking for targets amongst an array of distractors is a cognitive task that has been studied extensively over many decades and has many real-world applications. Research shows that specific visual-cognitive abilities are needed to efficiently and effectively locate a target among distrac...

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Autores principales: Hättenschwiler, Nicole, Merks, Sarah, Sterchi, Yanik, Schwaninger, Adrian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6437096/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30984052
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00525
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author Hättenschwiler, Nicole
Merks, Sarah
Sterchi, Yanik
Schwaninger, Adrian
author_facet Hättenschwiler, Nicole
Merks, Sarah
Sterchi, Yanik
Schwaninger, Adrian
author_sort Hättenschwiler, Nicole
collection PubMed
description The act of looking for targets amongst an array of distractors is a cognitive task that has been studied extensively over many decades and has many real-world applications. Research shows that specific visual-cognitive abilities are needed to efficiently and effectively locate a target among distractors. It is, however, not always clear whether the results from traditional, simplified visual search tasks conducted by students will extrapolate to an applied inspection tasks in which professionals search for targets that are more complex, ambiguous, and less salient. More concretely, there are several potential challenges when interpreting traditional visual search results in terms of their implications for the X-ray image inspection task. In this study, we tested whether a theoretical intelligence model with known facets of visual-cognitive abilities (visual processing Gv, short-term memory Gsm, and processing speed Gs) can predict performance in both a traditional visual search task and an X-ray image inspection task in both students and professionals. Results showed that visual search ability as measured with a traditional visual search task is not comparable to an applied X-ray image inspection task. Even though both tasks require aspects of the same visual-cognitive abilities, the overlap between the tasks was small. We concluded that different aspects of visual-cognitive abilities predict performance on the measured tasks. Furthermore, although our tested populations were comparable in terms of performance predictors based on visual-cognitive abilities, professionals outperformed students on an applied X-ray image inspection task. Hence, inferences from our research questions have to be treated with caution, because the comparability of the two populations depends on the task.
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spelling pubmed-64370962019-04-12 Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed? Hättenschwiler, Nicole Merks, Sarah Sterchi, Yanik Schwaninger, Adrian Front Psychol Psychology The act of looking for targets amongst an array of distractors is a cognitive task that has been studied extensively over many decades and has many real-world applications. Research shows that specific visual-cognitive abilities are needed to efficiently and effectively locate a target among distractors. It is, however, not always clear whether the results from traditional, simplified visual search tasks conducted by students will extrapolate to an applied inspection tasks in which professionals search for targets that are more complex, ambiguous, and less salient. More concretely, there are several potential challenges when interpreting traditional visual search results in terms of their implications for the X-ray image inspection task. In this study, we tested whether a theoretical intelligence model with known facets of visual-cognitive abilities (visual processing Gv, short-term memory Gsm, and processing speed Gs) can predict performance in both a traditional visual search task and an X-ray image inspection task in both students and professionals. Results showed that visual search ability as measured with a traditional visual search task is not comparable to an applied X-ray image inspection task. Even though both tasks require aspects of the same visual-cognitive abilities, the overlap between the tasks was small. We concluded that different aspects of visual-cognitive abilities predict performance on the measured tasks. Furthermore, although our tested populations were comparable in terms of performance predictors based on visual-cognitive abilities, professionals outperformed students on an applied X-ray image inspection task. Hence, inferences from our research questions have to be treated with caution, because the comparability of the two populations depends on the task. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-03-21 /pmc/articles/PMC6437096/ /pubmed/30984052 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00525 Text en Copyright © 2019 Hättenschwiler, Merks, Sterchi and Schwaninger. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Hättenschwiler, Nicole
Merks, Sarah
Sterchi, Yanik
Schwaninger, Adrian
Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed?
title Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed?
title_full Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed?
title_fullStr Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed?
title_full_unstemmed Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed?
title_short Traditional Visual Search vs. X-Ray Image Inspection in Students and Professionals: Are the Same Visual-Cognitive Abilities Needed?
title_sort traditional visual search vs. x-ray image inspection in students and professionals: are the same visual-cognitive abilities needed?
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6437096/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30984052
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00525
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