Salient Distractors Shift Both Perceptual Sensitivity and Response Criterion in Visual Search: A Meta-Analytic Reinterpretation of the Early Quitting Effect: Commentary on Moher (2020)

Moher (2020) attributed the early quitting effect (EQE)—faster target-absent responses and elevated miss rates in the presence of salient distractors—to a lowered quitting threshold. Yet this interpretation is underdetermined because the behavioral signatures are jointly consistent with a decline in perceptual sensitivity (d′), a conservative shift in response criterion (c), or both. We conducted a random-effects meta-analysis of signal detection theory (SDT) parameters across 13 independent samples from five published EQE studies. Both components were statistically reliable (Hedges' g = −0.36 for d′; Hedges' g = +0.36 for c), but heterogeneity analyses revealed that the criterion shift is more consistent across studies (I² = 38%) than the sensitivity decline (I² = 59%). We propose that salient distractors serve as heuristic anchors that reliably shift c, with secondary and context-dependent effects on d′. Adopting SDT decomposition as standard analytic practice—alongside network-resolved neuroimaging—would substantially advance mechanistic understanding of this practically important phenomenon.