Visual search and childhood vision impairment: A GAMLSS-oriented multiverse analysis approach.

Constable, Paul A.; Loh, Lynne; Prem-Senthil, Mallika; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando

The aim of this report was to analyze reaction times and accuracy in children with a vision impairment performing a feature-based visual search task using a multiverse statistical approach. The search task consisted of set sizes 4, 16, and 24, consisting of distractors (circle) and a target (ellipse) that were presented randomly to school-aged individuals with or without a vision impairment. Interactions and main effects of key variables relating to reaction times and accuracy were analyzed via a novel statistical method blending GAMLSS (generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape) and distributional regression trees. Reaction times for the target-present and target-absent conditions were significantly slower in the vision impairment group with increasing set sizes (p <.001). Female participants were significantly slower than were males for set sizes 16 and 24 in the target-absent condition (p <.001), with male participants being significantly slower than females in the target-present condition (p <.001). Accuracy was only significantly worse (p =.03) for participants less than 14 years of age for the target-absent condition with set sizes 16 and 24. There was a positive association between binocular visual acuity and search time (p <.001). The application of GAMLSS with distributional regression trees to the analysis of visual search data may provide further insights into underlying factors affecting search performance in case-control studies where psychological or physical differences may influence visual search outcomes.

VISION disorders; VISUAL perception; VISUAL acuity; REGRESSION trees; REGRESSION analysis

Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 2023, Vol 85, Issue 4, p968

1943-3921

Academic Journal

10.3758/s13414-023-02670-z