Stephen R Mitroff

• Ph.D., Harvard University
• Professor (Associate) at George Washington University

The behavioral sciences have had great success in their study of the mechanisms that drive behavior. However, they have had less impact on applied settings or policy. This gap results from the very adaptability that makes human behavior useful. Adaptability implies that behavior will be highly specific to the context in which it occurs. Thus, build...

Standard cognitive psychology research practices can introduce inadvertent sampling biases that reduce the reliability and generalizability of the findings. Researchers commonly acknowledge and understand that any given study sample is not perfectly generalizable, especially when implementing typical experimental constraints (e.g., limiting recruit...

Visual search-looking for targets among distractors-underlies many critical professions (e.g., radiology, aviation security) that demand optimal performance. As such, it is important to identify, understand, and ameliorate negative factors such as fatigue-mental and/or physical tiredness that leads to diminished function. One way to reduce the detr...

Objective: The long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students' mental health remains unknown. The current study explored self-reported Obsessive-Compulsive symptomatology among college student cohorts from pre-, peak-, and later-pandemic time points. Participants: Undergraduate college students (N = 524) who volunteered for...

Human behavior does not exist in a bubble-it is influenced by countless forces, including each individual's current goals, preexisting cognitive biases, and prior experience. The current project leveraged a massive behavioral data set to provide a data-driven quantification of the relationship between prior experience and current behavior. Data fro...

Objective: Visual search—looking for targets among distractors—underlies many critical professions (e.g., radiology, aviation security) that demand optimal performance. As such, it is important to identify, understand, and ameliorate negative factors such as fatigue—mental and/or physical tiredness and diminished function. One way to reduce the det...

Realizing the benefits of research for human factors applications requires that academic theory and applied research in operational environments work in tandem, each informing the other. Mechanistic theories about cognitive processing gain insight from incorporating information from practical applications. Likewise, human factors implementations re...

Medical image interpretation is central to detecting, diagnosing, and staging cancer and many other disorders. At a time when medical imaging is being transformed by digital technologies and artificial intelligence, understanding the basic perceptual and cognitive processes underlying medical image interpretation is vital for increasing diagnostici...

Professions such as radiology and aviation security screening that rely on visual search—the act of looking for targets among distractors—often cannot provide operators immediate feedback, which can create situations where performance may be largely driven by the searchers’ own expectations. For example, if searchers do not expect relatively hard-t...

Decades of research in cognitive psychology have largely relied on simple key or button presses to quantify human behavior. While many valuable discoveries have been made, a richer response modality may reveal more information regarding the different processes that underlie complex human behavior. This study provides a proof of concept for using a...

Visual search, looking for targets among distractors, underlies many critical professions and must often be performed optimally regardless of the time of day, week, or year. However, external events can disrupt the ability to perform. The current study examined one such specific event: Daylight Saving Time (DST) transitions—when the clock shifts fo...

Decades of research in cognitive psychology have largely relied on simple key or button presses to quantify human behavior. While many valuable discoveries have been made, a richer response modality may reveal more information regarding the different processes that underlie complex human behavior. The current study provides a proof of concept for u...

Professions such as radiology and aviation security screening that rely on visual search— the act of looking for targets among distractors—often cannot provide operators immediate feedback, which can create situations where performance may be largely driven by the searchers’ own expectations. For example, if searchers do not expect relatively hard-...

Human behavior does not exist in a bubble—it is influenced by countless forces, including each individual’s current goals, pre-existing cognitive biases, and prior experience. The current project leveraged a massive behavioral dataset to provide a data-driven quantification of the relationship between prior experience and current behavior. Data fro...

Large-scale replication failures have shaken confidence in the social sciences, psychology in particular. Most researchers acknowledge the problem, yet there is widespread debate about the causes and solutions. Using “big data,” the current project demonstrates that unintended consequences of three common questionable research practices (retaining...

Cognitive psychologists often recruit through university-organized subject pools. Such pools are effective for data collection, providing access to a convenient sample. However, there are potential concerns, including the commonly held belief that the students who volunteer for participation at the end of the academic term might provide less reliab...

Visual search, the act of finding targets amongst distractors, is central to many professions with life-or-death implications including aviation security, radiology, lifeguarding, military, and more. As such, every effort should be taken to improve visual search performance. One potential path to improvement is to ensure that workforces are optimal...

The following formatting changes to the figures and table need to be made in order to enhance readability.

Visual search, looking for targets among distractors, is a core cognitive ability for many professions (e.g., aviation security, radiology, military). As such, there is often a large focus on training to improve performance. Existing training procedures largely emphasize improving target recognition skills (i.e., identifying targets), however, gene...

Visual search, finding targets among distractors, is theoretically interesting and practically important as it involves many cognitive abilities and is vital for several critical industries (e.g., radiology, baggage screening). Unfortunately, search is especially error prone when more than one target is present in a display (a phenomenon termed the...

Background: Radiological techniques for breast cancer detection are undergoing a massive technological shift-moving from mammography, a process that takes a two-dimensional (2D) image of breast tissue, to tomosynthesis, a technique that creates a segmented-three-dimensional (3D) image. There are distinct benefits of tomosynthesis over mammography...

General Audience Summary Many professions (e.g., radiology, airport security) demand highly accurate and efficient visual search, which is the ability to locate target items among distractors. For example, radiologists search radiograph X-rays for cancerous tumors, airport security screeners search luggage X-rays for guns, and Marines search roadsi...

Not everyone is equally well suited for every endeavor-individuals differ in their strengths and weaknesses, which makes some people better at performing some tasks than others. As such, it might be possible to predict individuals' peak competence (i.e., ultimate level of success) on a given task based on their early performance in that task. The c...

Big data has revolutionized a number of industries as it provides a powerful tool for asking and answering questions in novel ways. Academic researchers can join this trend and use immense and complex datasets to explore previously intractable questions. Yet, accessing and analyzing big data can be difficult. The goal of this chapter is to outline...

Objective The study’s objective was to assess a new personnel selection and assessment tool for aviation security screeners. A mobile app was modified to create a tool, and the question was whether it could predict professional screeners’ on-job performance. Background A variety of professions (airport security, radiology, the military, etc.) rely...

Visual search is an everyday task conducted in a wide variety of contexts. Some searches are mundane, such as finding a beverage in the refrigerator, and some have life-or-death consequences, such as finding improvised explosives at a security checkpoint or within a combat zone. Prior work has shown numerous influences on search, including “bottom-...

Multiple-target visual searches, where more than one target can be present within a single search array, are especially error-prone such that a second target is more likely to be missed after a first target has been detected. Increasingly, evidence supports a resource depletion account of these errors-a first target consumes attentional resources l...

Several striking visual phenomena involve a physically present stimulus that alternates between being perceived and being “invisible.” For example, motion-induced blindness, the Troxler effect, and perceptual filling-in all consist of subjective alternations where an item repeatedly changes from being seen to unseen. In the present study, we explor...

Most professional visual searchers (e.g., radiologists, baggage screeners) face an interesting conundrum—they must be highly accurate while also performing in a timely fashion. Airport security personnel, for example, are tasked with preventing any and all dangerous items from getting aboard a plane, but they must also be speedy to keep the passeng...

Sensorimotor abilities are crucial for performance in athletic, military, and other occupational activities, and there is great interest in understanding learning in these skills. Here, behavioral performance was measured over three days as twenty-seven participants practiced multiple sessions on the Nike SPARQ Sensory Station (Nike, Inc., Beaverto...

Fear learning can be adaptively advantageous, but only if the learning is integrated with higher-order cognitive processes that impact goal-directed behaviors. Recent work has demonstrated generalization (i.e., transfer) of conditioned fear across perceptual dimensions and conceptual categories, but it is not clear how fear generalization influence...

The attentional blink (AB) is a compelling psychological phenomenon wherein observers are less likely to identify a second target (T2) when it appears approximately 200 ms after a first target (T1) in a rapidly presented stream of items. The present investigation examined how monetary motivation could impact the AB when participants were differenti...

Multiple-target visual searches are susceptible to Subsequent Search Miss (SSM) errors—a reduced accuracy for target detection after a previous target has already been detected. SSM errors occur in critical searches (e.g., evaluations of radiographs and airport luggage x-rays), and have proven to be a stubborn problem. A few SSM theories have been...

Visual search—the ability to locate visual targets among distractors—is a fundamental part of professional performance for many careers, including radiology, airport security screening, cytology, lifeguarding, and more. Successful execution of visual search in these settings is critically important because the consequences of a missed target can be...

Life is not a series of independent events, but rather, each event is influenced by what just happened and what might happen next. However, many research studies treat any given trial as an independent and isolated event. Some research fields explicitly test trial-to-trial influences (e.g., repetition priming, task switching), but many, including v...

Multiple-target visual searches, where more than one target can be present within a single search array, are especially error-prone such that a second target is more likely to be missed after a first target has been detected. This is a serious concern for many critical searches (e.g., radiology, baggage screening) and also raises interesting theore...

Airport security personnel search for a large number of prohibited items that vary in size, shape, color, category-membership, and more. This highly varied search set creates challenges for search accuracy, including how searchers are trained in identifying a myriad of potential targets. This challenge has both practical and theoretical implication...

Visual search is an essential task for many lifesaving professions; airport security personnel search baggage X-ray images for dangerous items and radiologists examine radiographs for tumors. Accuracy is critical for such searches; however, there are potentially negative influences that can affect performance; for example, the displays can be clutt...

Shooting a firearm involves a complex series of cognitive abilities. For example, locating an item or a person of interest requires visual search, and firing the weapon (or withholding a trigger squeeze) involves response execution (or inhibition). The present study used a simulated shooting environment to establish a relationship between a particu...

Practice can improve performance on visual search tasks; the neural mechanisms underlying such improvements, however, are not clear. Response time typically shortens with practice, but which components of the stimulus-response processing chain facilitate this behavioral change? Improved search performance could result from enhancements in various c...

The contents of working memory (WM) have been repeatedly found to guide the allocation of visual attention; in a dual-task paradigm that combines WM and visual search, actively holding an item in WM biases visual attention towards memory-matching items during search (e.g., Soto et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor...

The ability to quickly detect and respond to visual stimuli in the environment is critical to many human activities. While such perceptual and visual-motor skills are important in a myriad of contexts, considerable variability exists between individuals in these abilities. To better understand the sources of this variability, we assessed perceptual...

Visual search is a common practice conducted countless times every day, and one important aspect of visual search is that multiple targets can appear in a single search array. For example, an X-ray image of airport luggage could contain both a water bottle and a gun. Searchers are more likely to miss additional targets after locating a first target...

Visual search is the process of finding specific target items within an environment using particular visual features or prior knowledge. Searches can be as easy as finding your friend with purple hair in a lecture hall or as complicated as finding a purposefully concealed weapon among thousands of harmless bags at an airport checkpoint. Visual sear...

Mobile technology (e.g., smartphones and tablets) has provided psychologists with a wonderful opportunity: through careful design and implementation, mobile applications can be used to crowd source data collection. By garnering massive amounts of data from a wide variety of individuals, it is possible to explore psychological questions that have, t...

Security checkpoints are used to keep potentially dangerous items and individuals out of secure areas. Although technological advances can enhance security efficacy through both accuracy and speed, ultimate success or failure is largely determined by human performance. As such, it is necessary to minimize any shortcomings that stem from the limits...

Professional visual searches, such as those conducted by airport security personnel, often demand highly accurate performance. As many factors can hinder accuracy, it is critical to understand the potential influences. Here, we examined how explicit decision-making criteria might affect multiple-target search performance. Non-professional searchers...

Visual searches with several targets in a display have been shown to be particularly prone to miss errors in both academic laboratory searches and professional searches such as radiology and baggage screening. Specifically, finding 1 target in a display can reduce the likelihood of detecting additional targets. This phenomenon was originally referr...

Visual search, locating target items among distractors, underlies daily activities ranging from critical tasks (e.g., looking for dangerous objects during security screening) to commonplace ones (e.g., finding your friends in a crowded bar). Both professional and non-professional individuals conduct visual searches, and the present investigation is...

Accuracy is paramount in radiology and security screening, yet many factors undermine success. Target prevalence is a particularly worrisome factor, as targets are rarely present (e.g., the cancer rate in mammography is ~0.5%), and low target prevalence has been linked to increased search errors. More troubling is the fact that specific target type...

An accurate assessment of face symmetry is necessary for the development of a dentofacial diagnosis in orthodontics, and an understanding of individual differences in perception of face symmetry between patients and providers is needed to facilitate successful treatment. Orthodontists, general dentists, and control participants completed a series o...

Satisfaction of search (which we refer to as subsequent search misses)-a decrease in accuracy at detecting a second target after a first target has been found in a visual search-underlies real-world search errors (e.g., tumors may be missed in an X-ray if another tumor already has been found), but little is known about this phenomenon's cognitive u...

Perceptual information represented in the brain, whether a viewer is aware of it or not, holds the potential to influence subsequent behavior. Here we tracked a well-established event-related-potential (ERP) measure of visual-object-category processing, the face-specific ventrolateral-occipital N170 response, across conditions of perceptual awarene...

Career visual searchers such as radiologists and airport security screeners strive to conduct accurate visual searches, but despite extensive training, errors still occur. A key difference between searches in radiology and airport security is the structure of the search task: Radiologists typically scan a certain number of medical images (fixed obj...

Assessing facial symmetry is an evolutionarily important process, which suggests that individual differences in this ability should exist. As existing data are inconclusive, the current study explored whether a group trained in facial symmetry assessment, orthodontists, possessed enhanced abilities. Symmetry assessment was measured using face and n...

Multiple-target visual searches are especially error prone; once one target is found, additional targets are likely to be missed. This phenomenon, often called satisfaction of search (which we refer to here as subsequent search misses; SSMs), is well known in radiology, despite no existing consensus about the underlying cause(s). Taking a cognitive...

Professionals whose careers depend on visual skills typically demonstrate superior performance on career-related tasks; farmers better determine the sex of day-old chicks (Biederman & Shiffrar, 1987), and bank tellers better detect counterfeit currency (Klein, Gadbois, & Christie, 2004). Perceptual expertise has implications for learning and mallea...

As the visual world is too complicated to be processed in its entirety, it is important to understand why attention is guided to some aspects of a display, but not others. The study of attentional guidance has typically focused on two distinct classes of mechanisms: stimulus-driven (the physical properties of a visual display) and goal-driven (top-...

Visual search, the process of looking for targets amongst distractors, is an everyday activity executed in a variety of contexts. While searches are often mundane (e.g., looking for your keys) they can also be highly important (e.g., airport baggage screeners looking for contraband). Considerable research has examined the nature of visual search ac...

Several perceptual phenomena strikingly demonstrate that visible stimuli can fluctuate into and out of awareness; a physically available object will alternate between being perceived and being ‘invisible’ due to motion-induced blindness (MIB; Bonneh, Cooperman and Sagi 2001), the Troxler effect (TE; Troxler, 1804), and perceptual filling-in (PFI; R...

Action video game playing has been experimentally linked to a number of perceptual and cognitive improvements. These benefits are captured through a wide range of psychometric tasks and have led to the proposition that action video game experience may promote the ability to extract statistical evidence from sensory stimuli. Such an advantage could...

Many factors influence visual search, including how much targets stand out (i.e., their visual salience) and whether they are currently relevant (i.e., Are they in working memory?). Although these are two known influences on search performance, it is unclear how they interact to guide attention. The present study explored this interplay by having p...

Objectives: Assessing face symmetry is key to diagnosis in dentistry. By comparing performance on tests of visual cognition (symmetry assessment) across dental students, orthodontics residents, orthodontics faculty, and untrained controls, we explored the nature and development of this ability. With a better understanding of how this clinical skill...

Some visual searches depend upon accuracy (e.g., radiology, airport security screening), and it is important for both theoretical and applied reasons to understand what factors best predict performance. The current study administered a visual search task to both professional (Transportation Security Administration Officers) and nonprofessional (mem...

Research in visual search can be vital to improving performance in careers such as radiology and airport security screening. In these applied, or "field," searches, accuracy is critical, and misses are potentially fatal; however, despite the importance of performing optimally, radiological and airport security searches are nevertheless flawed. Exte...

Multiple-target visual searches-when more than 1 target can appear in a given search display-are commonplace in radiology, airport security screening, and the military. Whereas 1 target is often found accurately, additional targets are more likely to be missed in multiple-target searches. To better understand this decrement in 2nd-target detection,...

International Journal of Exercise Science 5(4) : 344-­353, 2012. The dynamic aspects of sports often place heavy demands on visual processing. As such, an important goal for sports training should be to enhance visual abilities. Recent research has suggested that training in a stroboscopic environment, where visual experiences alternate between vis...

Autism spectrum disorder is typically associated with social deficits and is often specifically linked to difficulty with processing faces and other socially relevant stimuli. Emerging research has suggested that children with autism might also have deficits in basic perceptual abilities including multisensory processing (e.g., simultaneously proce...