Airport security could miss contraband due to easy-to-spot prohibited items

Washington, April 21 (ANI): Airport security can fail to spot banned items like box cutters if they identify an easy-to-spot prohibited item like a water bottle, a new American research has found.

The Duke University study has appeared online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

For the study, Stephen Mitroff, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke and his group asked college students to identify specific targets on a computer display - in this case, two perpendicular lines that form the letter "T" amid distracters, such as Ls and non-Ts.

In some cases, Ts were easy to spot, and in other cases more difficult because they blended in with the background.

In an initial set of experiments, Mitroff and his team altered the frequency of easy- and hard-to-spot targets.

When the two kinds of targets appeared with equal frequency, subjects apparently had no trouble finding the hard-to-spot target in the presence of an easy one.

But when the easy-to-spot item was two or three times more common, the subjects tended to overlook the hard-to-spot targets.

When Mitroff's group doubled the time allowed for each search, they saw that the students used barely a second of extra time but were significantly more accurate.

Mitroff said: "It didn't seem to do with time itself, but it seems to be the time pressure.

"When you have the impending time pressure of going quickly, you are more likely to miss a second target."

Interestingly, the data do not suggest subjects miss the second targets because they are too quick to end their search, an idea that would have bolstered the original satisfaction-of-search principle.

Mitroff said: "There seems to be some other mechanism, but it's not exactly clear what it is."

One possible explanation is an idea called "attentional set," which suggests that finding one kind of target will make you more likely to find that same type of target rather than a new, different one.

In radiology, it is like finding a fracture, which makes you more likely to find a second fracture rather than some other anomaly.

In an additional set of experiments, the researchers added time and accuracy pressure to the test by introducing small baggage icons that appeared along the top of the screen, mimicking a new bag on the security conveyer belt.

One bag disappeared when subjects finished searching each display.

They earned points for each display and the more quickly and accurately the subjects could identify the targets, the higher the points they received.

For one group of subjects, researchers set the speed of bags based on the each person's performance in a previous practice session.

That group wasn't any worse at finding the second target than the first.

In contrast, subjects following a brisk rate set by the researchers were worse at finding the second target.

Mitroff said: "The results fit with what we think would happen if you remove the searcher from seeing the line."

In a remote search, the screeners will not know whether there is one person or 500 people waiting.

He added: "It's not in use, but these data suggest that it might be something worth trying."

Mitroff's group now plans to replace T-targets with multiple targets of different types, such as tools and bottles. (ANI)