An experimental study of improving visual search performance of pilot candidates by unconscious stimuli

BAI Shuang; HUANG Yaping; LIU Juan; ZHANG Lin; ZHANG Muzhe

Abstract：ObjectiveTo study the contribution of unconscious stimuli to visual search performance of pilot candidates.MethodsA total of 15 senior pilot candidates in an Air Force university were recruited as the subjects. A visual search experiment was designed by E-prime 2.0 psychology software so as to control the presentation time of experiment materials and measure the response time and accuracy of the visual search task. The data were statistically analyzed with Two-Way ANOVA.ResultsVariance analysis of task accuracy showed that the main effect of the cue range was remarkable(P<0.05), but the main effect of the duration for each stimuli presentation and the interaction was insignificant (P>0.05). In case of a small cue range, analysis of simple effect on task accuracy showed that the difference was marginally significant statistically(P=0.058). The highest accuracy was achieved when the stimulus presentation time was 35 ms. Variance analysis of response time showed that the main effect of the cue range was remarkable(P<0.05), while, the main effect of the duration for each stimulus presentation and interaction was insignificant(P>0.05).Conclusion The results of behavioral experiments show that those small scale cues of the threshold level (35 ms) can improve pilot candidates' accuracy of visual search, so subliminal perception is processed at a high cognition level. The unseen visual cues can be used to improve visual search performance of pilot candidates.