The block of trials was preceded by 50 practice trials with a 10% target prevalence rate in order to allow search parameters (quitting threshold and decision criterion) to be set for a low prevalence task (Ishibashi, Kita, & Wolfe, 2012; Wolfe & Van Wert, 2010).
It may then be feasible to estimate Q, from which a treatment protocol can be designed that will be associated with a pre-defined target prevalence.
These probabilities can be estimated based on a pre-defined target prevalence, known surveillance efforts in the target population and known test characteristics of any pre-export test.
A participant using a common search strategy of top-to-bottom across target prevalence conditions (a, b, c) and a participant using a common search strategy of left-to-right across target prevalence conditions (d, e, f).
This was confirmed by a significant interaction between target prevalence and target presence, F 1, 140) = 103.23, p < 0.001, ηp 2 = 0.42, driven by a much larger prevalence effect in target-absent trials.
This was confirmed by a significant interaction between target prevalence and target presence, F 1, 140) = 165.87, p < 0.001, ηp 2 = 0.54, such that hit rate was lower in low prevalence trials.
Models theorise that adding vector control to MDA campaigns will decrease the number of years required to meet the target prevalence, for a given baseline endemicity [ 11].
The current work demonstrates that approaching the problems associated with low target prevalence from an individual differences perspective has promise.
Although there was a significant benefit in this experiment, there was no hint of a benefit in Experiment 6, which was an exact replication except that the target prevalence was increased from 25% (Experiment 5) to 50% (Experiment 6).
