Display size and distractor complexity effects on visual search.

• Human performance usually improves with increases in display size and addressability. • Recently visual search efficiency has been shown to decrease with increases in display size. • Visual search efficiency degrades with increased display size across a range of target densities. • Visual search efficiency degrades with increases in distractor complexity. • Interaction of display size and distractor complexity reduces search efficiency in target present conditions. The proliferation of higher quality connected sensors is consistently increasing the amount of information available to operators, increasing the complexity of displayed information. Coupling this increase in information with larger, higher addressability displays may lead to increasingly complex visual search paradigms. The current research explored the effect of both display size and distractor symbol complexity on visual search efficiency across three different symbol set sizes. Overall, the results indicate a reduction in search efficiency as a function of both increased display size and distractor complexity, even for the high target densities employed within this study. Further, these variables can interact in target present conditions to influence search times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]