Effects of time pressure and task difficulty on visual search

Abstract

The process of pilot constantly checking the information given by instruments was examined in this study to detect the effects of time pressure and task difficulty on visual searching. A software was designed to simulate visual detection tasks, in which time pressure and task difficulty were adjusted. Two-factor analysis of variance, simple main effect, and regression analyses were conducted on the accuracy and reaction time obtained. Results showed that both time pressure and task difficulty significantly affected accuracy. Moreover, an interaction was apparent between the two factors. In addition, task difficulty had a significant effect on reaction time, which had a linearly increasing relationship with the number of stimuli. By contrast, the effect of time pressure on reaction time was not so apparent under high reaction accuracy of 90 % or above. In the ergonomic design of a human-machine interface, a good matching between time pressure and task difficulty is key to yield excellent searching performance.