The Tendency Of Verification In Visual Search Tasks And Persistence Tasks

Confirmation bias refers to the tendency or deviation of an individual unconscious to confirm an existing idea or hypothesis while ignoring the evidence contradicting it.That is,when individuals choose or evaluate information,they tend to confirm a known key hypothesis,which is even more exclusive.The result of this tendency is that people cling to unwarranted beliefs,and contrary opinions or evidence tend to be ignored or even misinterpreted to support existing beliefs.Visual search is partly influenced by top-down processing.Visual stimuli that are similar to the target template and match the same characteristics are likely to be given priority processing,which makes it easier to generate confirmatory tendencies in visual search tasks.So is this kind of confirmation bias the default visual processing mechanism within individuals? Or prove that the preferred search strategy is only a more practical search strategy in the visual search scenario.Persistence refers to an individual’s tendency to behave in a goal-oriented,autonomous,and sustained effort in the course of pursuing the goal and in the face of difficulties and setbacks.So when faced with a setback,does the decision of individual’s persistence show the tendency to confirm? In this study,two experiments were conducted to investigate the above problems.Using the EyeLink 1000 plus eye tracker,we used the visual search task paradigm to examine the individual’s confirm bias in the visual search task.It was found that the individuals in the process of visual search show strongly confirm bias,which is embodied in: 1.on the reaction behavior index,individuals search faster in matching conditions than mismatching conditions,and with the increase of template-color matching proportion,the reaction time of the individuals’ increases;2.similar eye-movement patterns were shown in the total fixation time,number of total fixation and saccade amplitude,indicating that the individuals tended to adopt the confirmation strategy;3.it is important to note that individuals in template-color matching proportion of 50% and 75% didn’t show significant difference,which may indicate the individuals finded and used the optimal implied strategy,but not enough to make it to overcome the tendency to confirm.Given that the advantages of high time resolution of the event related potential technology,we adopt the PAS(persistence after setbacks)tasks,examines the confimation bias in behavior of persistence after different type setbacks and the ERPs index’s changes of P2,P3 and LPP.We found that individuals’ persistence after the controllable setbacks and the uncontrollable setbacks shows significant differences,and after the uncontrollable setbacks participants persist more,which indicate that participants show a confirmation bias.There was no significant difference in different types of frustration among individuals.Comprehensive analysis of the results of two experiments,this study found: 1.the individuals show their strongly confirmation bias in the visual search task,that is,they search faster in the template-color matching condition,and with the increase of template-color matching proportion,the reaction time of the individuals’ increases;2.individuals showed higher persistence after uncontrollable setbacks.There was no significant difference in ERPs index among these setback types.