Adopting a multidisciplinary approach to maximising performance during military visual search tasks

Cornes, Katherine; Boardman, Michael; Ford, Channing R.; Smith, Sarah

doi:10.1136/jramc-2018-001051

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…In this Special Edition of the Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps (JRAMC), several articles from Dstl psychological scientists provide examples of cognitive and human factors research. Such papers examine the applied psychological variables that underpin performance improvements in Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Specialist Search Teams3 and health psychology research that has informed MOD strategy and policy in the area of risk propensity and health behaviours of deployed UK army personnel 4. However, to illustrate the breadth of the research challenges, Dstl psychologists address across their duties, the following three examples consider domains that are current for the MOD’s research psychologists, namely cross-cultural communication, counter-terrorism and the application of future technology to enhance human capability.…”

Section: What Is the Defence Science Technology Laboratory?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of research psychology in defence and security

Butcher

2018

J R Army Med Corps

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The following article provides an overview of the research psychology capabilities within MOD's Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl). An explanation is provided of the role of Dstl psychologists and the way they work to deliver impacting applied scientific research to address 'real world' defence and security challenges. Three short case studies are provided to illustrate the range of work they delivered.

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Section: What Is the Defence Science Technology Laboratory?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of research psychology in defence and security

Butcher

2018

J R Army Med Corps

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“…Given the prominent role of visual search in so many facets of life, it is not surprising that it has been widely studied (for overviews see Clark et al, 2012 ; Wolfe, 2020a ). Much has been learned about the processes underlying search and the practical factors that affect performance through research in cognitive psychology (for reviews see Chan & Hayward, 2013 ; Eckstein, 2011 and Nakayama & Martini, 2011 ), academic radiology (e.g., Krupinski, 2010 , 2015 ; Kundel et al, 1978 ), aviation security (e.g., Mitroff et al, 2018 ; Wetter, 2013 ), military research (e.g., Cornes et al, 2019 ; Janelle & Hatfield, 2008 ), and more. Collectively, these efforts have served to isolate core cognitive mechanisms that drive search performance and inform how to optimize performance in a range of practical settings (Wolfe, 2020b ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Great expectations: minor differences in initial instructions have a major impact on visual search in the absence of feedback

2021

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Professions such as radiology and aviation security screening that rely on visual search—the act of looking for targets among distractors—often cannot provide operators immediate feedback, which can create situations where performance may be largely driven by the searchers’ own expectations. For example, if searchers do not expect relatively hard-to-spot targets to be present in a given search, they may find easy-to-spot targets but systematically quit searching before finding more difficult ones. Without feedback, searchers can create self-fulfilling prophecies where they incorrectly reinforce initial biases (e.g., first assuming and then, perhaps wrongly, concluding hard-to-spot targets are rare). In the current study, two groups of searchers completed an identical visual search task but with just a single difference in their initial task instructions before the experiment started; those in the “high-expectation” condition were told that each trial could have one or two targets present (i.e., correctly implying no target-absent trials) and those in the “low-expectation” condition were told that each trial would have up to two targets (i.e., incorrectly implying there could be target-absent trials). Compared to the high-expectation group, the low-expectation group had a lower hit rate, lower false alarm rate and quit trials more quickly, consistent with a lower quitting threshold (i.e., performing less exhaustive searches) and a potentially higher target-present decision criterion. The expectation effect was present from the start and remained across the experiment—despite exposure to the same true distribution of targets, the groups’ performances remained divergent, primarily driven by the different subjective experiences caused by each groups’ self-fulfilling prophecies. The effects were limited to the single-targets trials, which provides insights into the mechanisms affected by the initial expectations set by the instructions. In sum, initial expectations can have dramatic influences—searchers who do not expect to find a target, are less likely to find a target as they are more likely to quit searching earlier.

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“…Given the prominent role of visual search in so many facets of life, it is not surprising that it has been widely studied (for overviews see Clark, Cain, Adamo, & Mitroff, 2012;Wolfe, 2020a). Much has been learned about the processes underlying search and the practical factors that affect performance through research in cognitive psychology (for recent reviews see Chan & Hayward, 2013;Eckstein, 2011 andNakayama &Martini, 2011), academic radiology (e.g., Krupinski, 2010;2015;Kundel, Nodine, & Carmody, 1978), aviation security (e.g., Mitroff, Ericson, & Sharpe, 2018;Wetter, 2013), military research (e.g., Cornes, Boardman, Ford, & Smith, 2019;Janelle & Hatfield, 2008), and more. Collectively, these efforts have served to isolate core cognitive mechanisms that drive search performance and inform how to optimize performance in a range of practical settings (Wolfe, 2020b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Great expectations: Minor differences in initial instructions have a major impact on visual search in the absence of feedback

Cox¹,

Kravitz²,

Mitroff³

2020

Preprint

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Professions such as radiology and aviation security screening that rely on visual search— the act of looking for targets among distractors—often cannot provide operators immediate feedback, which can create situations where performance may be largely driven by the searchers’ own expectations. For example, if searchers do not expect relatively hard- to-spot targets to be present in a given search, they may find easy-to-spot targets but systematically quit searching before finding more difficult ones. Without feedback, searchers can create self-fulfilling prophecies where they incorrectly reinforce initial biases (e.g., first assuming and then, perhaps wrongly, concluding hard-to-spot targets are rare). In the current study, two groups of searchers completed an identical visual search task but with just a single difference in their initial task instructions before the experiment started; those in the “high-expectation” condition were told that each trial could have one or two targets present (i.e., implying no target-absent trials) and those in the “low-expectation” condition were told that each trial would have up to two targets (i.e., implying there could be target-absent trials). Compared to the high-expectation group, the low-expectation group had a lower hit rate and quit trials more quickly, consistent with a lower quitting threshold (i.e., performing less exhaustive searches). The expectation effect was present from the start and remained across the experiment—despite exposure to the same true distribution of targets, the groups’ performance remained divergent, primarily driven by the low-expectation group’s self-fulfilling prophecy that stemmed from the simple instructions difference. In sum, initial expectations can have dramatic influences— searchers who do not expect to find a target, are less likely to find a target as they are more likely to quit searching faster.

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Adopting a multidisciplinary approach to maximising performance during military visual search tasks

Cited by 3 publications

References 18 publications

Role of research psychology in defence and security

Role of research psychology in defence and security

Great expectations: minor differences in initial instructions have a major impact on visual search in the absence of feedback

Great expectations: Minor differences in initial instructions have a major impact on visual search in the absence of feedback

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