False Pop Out and "Anti-metamers"

Abstract

False Pop Out (FPO) occurs when distractor items in a singleton search display pose as targets. The phenomenon is observed in response distributions in which there are a disproportionately large number of responses given to one particular distractor(s) (see Supplement). Such error distributions have been found in various display types: 3 in a row, 4 in a square, and patterns composed of heterogeneous items. These findings are consistent with the Theory of Basic Gestalts (Pomerantz & Portillo, 2011), as these patterns of performance seem to be the result of inter-item grouping in visual search displays. That is, emergent features within search displays guide participants’ perceptions of the displays, resulting in consistent patterns of erroneous responding. Recent research has also searched for pure FPO, in which one distractor falsely receives all responses (see example of one such stimulus in Supplement). In this case, two identical items would look different from one another ("anti-metamers"), and with displays of three or more items (i.e., singleton displays) one of the homogeneous distractors would be incorrectly perceived as the target as much as 100% of the time. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013