The effects of visual lobe training with easy and difficult targets on changes of visual lobe shape characteristics and visual search performance

This study aimed to study the effects of training on visual lobe shape characteristics with two levels of target difficulty (an easy target O and a difficult target V) and to study the transfer effect from lobe shape training to visual search performance. It was found that there was a noticeable improvement in lobe area and roundness for the difficult target lobes with the difficult target training groups, and that lobe area and roundness showed greatest sensitivity to the effects of training. The easy target lobes for the difficult target training group did not show any differences between pretest and posttest. There was a narrowing of differences in shape parameters between the two target difficulties from pretest to posttest after lobe mapping practice, suggesting that such practice could minimize lobe shape differences for different job difficulties. Search task practice was found to improve search performance, but lobe training produced no additional benefit for search time. Correlation analysis between lobe shape parameters and search time showed that a significant relationship existed only for the long time search task, indicating that mathematical models previously developed for search performance prediction may not be valid for short time search tasks. Relevance to industry: This research showed the relative sensitivity of different lobe shape indexes from training and indicated the importance of selecting an appropriate level of target difficulty for enhancing training effectiveness. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.