The role of inhibitory control in shoot/don’t-shoot decisions

Abstract

Previous work has demonstrated a link between cognitive abilities, specifically inhibitory control and lethal force decision-making performance. However, many previously used approaches to simulating shoot/don’t shoot scenarios have lacked ecological validity. There is a need to investigate how inhibitory control impacts shoot/don’t decisions using realistic simulations to better translate the findings to military and law enforcement settings. This study used multiple cognitive control tasks incorporating discrete judgements in go/no-go and stop signal tasks as well as subjective judgements in go/no-go tasks with both colour stimuli and emotional faces. These combined tasks provided a comprehensive evaluation of inhibitory control abilities. To ensure ecological validity in shooting performance, existing military training scenarios incorporated realistic weaponry and aiming behaviours across different shoot/don’t-shoot simulations. The inhibitory control battery identified five principal components from the various tasks, including: stopping ability, response speed, emotion detection, colour detection, and emotional biases. These principal inhibitory control components were entered into hierarchical linear regressions with the dependent variables of unintended casualties inflicted and lethal rounds fired, respectively. Stopping ability better predicted the likelihood of inflicting an unintended casualty, whereas response speed better predicted the number of lethal rounds fired. These regression models included baseline metrics of marksmanship and shots fired, which supports a role for inhibitory control above and beyond basic shooting abilities or strategy. These collective findings provide mechanistic support for the relationship between inhibitory control and errors in shoot/don’t-shoot decision-making while using realistic military training scenarios.

Shoot or Don’t Shoot? Tactical Gaze Control and Visual Attention Training Improves Police Cadets’ Decision-Making Performance in Live-Fire Scenarios

“…Vice versa, being overwhelmed and choking under pressure should not be the reason for not shooting. Biggs and Pettijohn (2021) showed in realistic military scenarios that inhibitory control plays a considerable role in shoot/don’t-shoot decision-making.…”

Building a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure: An international multi-panel Delphi study

“…Indeed, a number of RDoC constructs have already been linked to high performance. For instance, high performance has been linked to Cognitive Control—Response Inhibition/Suppression has been linked to high performance in sport ( Vestberg et al, 2012 ; Chen et al, 2019 ) and military domains ( Biggs and Pettijohn, 2022 ). Likewise, Working Memory and Attention have been linked to high performance in sport ( Voss et al, 2010 ; Vestberg et al, 2017 ) and aviation ( Causse et al, 2011 ; Gray et al, 2016 ).…”

Applying inhibitory control theories to shoot/don't‐shoot decisions

“…Of these various inhibitory control assessments exploring the relationship with shoot/don't‐shoot errors, one critical inclusion to any assessment should be the relative contribution of individual stopping ability. One analysis compared shooting performance during a simulated lethal force encounter to performance a battery of inhibitory control tasks, including both go/no‐go and stop signal tasks (Biggs & Pettijohn, 2021). Although response speed did impact the likelihood of firing lethal rounds, individual stopping ability better predicted errant firing upon non‐threatening individuals.…”

“…The inhibitory control parallel would be stop trials that become go trials (cf. Biggs & Pettijohn, 2021). Finally, to fully represent the possibilities in a potential lethal force encounter, these change trials would need to be combined with pure go trials, with hostile actors who remain hostile, and pure no‐go trials, with non‐hostile actors who remain non‐hostile throughout.…”