The roles of distractor noise and target certainty in search: a signal detection model

Observers searched arrays of briefly presented near-isoluminant colored disks for a single disk of known color (feature search) or unknown color (oddity search). Speed and accuracy were converted to a single, model-based measure of performance (Perf), in units of (d')2 per second of latency. Perf decreased with set size in feature search and increased in oddity. In both types of search, grouping the distractors, making them homogeneous in color, and reducing their saturation, all increased Perf. These commonalities suggested an SDT-based model in which distractors increase noise in the same way in both types of search. However, in oddity, though not in feature search, distractors must be attended and so adding distractors also boosts the effective target contrast, overcoming the added noise. A model with two free parameters for noise and one for attention accounted for every combination except for oddity searches among heterogeneous grouped distractors.