Prevalence in Visual Search: From the Clinic to the Lab and Back Again

One of the most important applications of visual search is in the interpretation of medical images. Like many applications of visual search, medical image interpretation is typically characterized as a low “prevalence” context, meaning that targets are relatively rare. Breast cancer screening, for example, has a prevalence of around 0.5%. In this review, I present a survey of research on the effects of prevalence on visual search from both the medical image perception and basic psychological science perspectives. In order to provide some quantitative rigor, I include a meta‐analysis of the effects of low prevalence on visual search performance. I synthesize findings from both fields, and identify both the practical suggestions for clinical practice and theoretical insights for cognitive psychologists.