Journal article
Satisfaction of search: evidence of premature termination in a naturalistic image inspection task
Cognitive research: principles and implications, Vol.11(1), 49
08/28/2026
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-026-00750-w
PMCID: PMC13582761
PMID: 42749861
Abstract
In radiology and in traditional visual search tasks, the detection of a first target in an image tends to impair the detection of additional targets, a phenomenon termed satisfaction of search (SOS) or subsequent search misses . The original explanation for SOS focused on early termination of inspection after having found a first target. Tests of this hypothesis have yielded mixed results, however. Here, we developed a novel task to examine the potential role of early termination in SOS. In our “Ghosts in the Forest” task, the visual search backgrounds were contour-dense natural scene images, and targets were semi-transparent face images drawn from two emotion categories: happy and angry. Targets were either high salience (HS) or low salience (LS), and scenes contained either one HS target, one LS target, or both an HS target and an LS target. First, we observed a robust SOS effect for the detection of LS targets, both in a sample of naïve observers (Experiment 1) and in a sample of radiologists (Experiment 2). Second, we observed an early termination effect following HS target detection. Third, the time spent searching after detecting an HS target reliably predicted the magnitude of the SOS effect at an individual participant level: SOS was most pronounced for those participants who terminated search earlier. Together, the results indicate that early termination of image inspection is a substantial cause of SOS in a task that embodies some of the core properties of medical image analysis.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Satisfaction of search: evidence of premature termination in a naturalistic image inspection task
- Creators
- Andrew Hollingworth - University of IowaZexuan Niu - University of IowaClaudia Mello-Thoms - University of IowaCathleen M. Moore - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Cognitive research: principles and implications, Vol.11(1), 49
- DOI
- 10.1186/s41235-026-00750-w
- PMID
- 42749861
- PMCID
- PMC13582761
- NLM abbreviation
- Cogn Res Princ Implic
- ISSN
- 2365-7464
- eISSN
- 2365-7464
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- Grant note
- National Cancer Institute: 1 RO1 CA259048
The work was supported by NIH/NCI grant 1 RO1 CA259048. Apart from funding the work, NIH had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in the writing of the manuscript.
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 08/28/2026
- Academic Unit
- Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering; Radiology; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Injury Prevention Research Center
- Record Identifier
- 9985222746602771
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