Conspicuity in small-target visual search on a complex display

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Rochester. College of Engineering and Applied Science. Institute of Optics. This thesis was digitized by the Institute of Optics in 2014 and was determined to have lapsed into the public domain. If you are the author and have questions about the digitization of your work, please contact Kari Brick, Graduate Program Coordinator for the Institute of Optics, at kbrick@ur.rochester.edu. Other contact information for the Institute is available at http://www.optics.rochester.eduThis study is concerned with the effect on conspicuity of chromatic and reflectance characteristics of small search targets against various non-homogeneous backgrounds. With an interest in practical search in the real world, such as locating a navigational daymark from great distances, subjects are instructed to search a large display for a small test square of known hue. The various search targets used provide differing chronaticities and/or reflectances with respect to both the overall display background, and to a number of other squares of the same size. The latter squares, henceforth referred to as "con-fusion" squares, are randomly scattered, and differ slightly in chromaticity from the general background. The inverse measure of conspicuity is the average search time required to locate the test target. Utilizing this criterion, search time is converted to equivalent achromatic contrast to be used as loci of equivalent conspicuity contours plotted on the CIE chromaticity diagram