Visual search for drowning swimmers: Investigating the impact of lifeguarding experience

Laxton, Victoria; Crundall, David; Guest, Duncan; Howard, Christina J.

doi:10.1002/acp.3756

Cited by 7 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In summary, Experiment 1 verified that the lifeguard experience effect previously shown by Laxton and Crundall (2018) and Laxton et al (2020) using artificial stimuli is evident when using real drowning scenes. However, it provides little information on the processes underlying this effect.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Of the few studies that have actually investigated lifeguard visual search, the results support the effect of domain experience in target detection when lifeguards' performance is compared to that of control participants (Laxton & Crundall, 2018;Laxton et al, 2020;Page et al, 2011). However, in the Laxton et al (2020) study it was found that there were no differences in eye-movements between experienced lifeguards and nonlifeguards (e.g., time to first fixate the target, processing time on target, etc.…”

Section: Assessing Lifeguards' Visual Search Skillsmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…There are both logical and theoretical reasons to believe that lifeguard superiority should be detected in visual search strategies, such as better scanning from exposure to pool environments or potential saliency of certain drowning types. Laxton et al (2020) explored this lifeguard superiority, but did not find any differences between lifeguard and nonlifeguard eye-movements following the onset of drowning events. However, they did note that small gains in time-to-first-fixate and target verification time added up to mirror the significant behavioral difference in RT between lifeguards and nonlifeguards.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…One difference between this current set of experiments and previous similar work (Laxton & Crundall, 2018;Laxton et al, 2020) is the more complex, realistic stimuli used to explore lifeguard drowning detection. It could be argued that the pool footage used in Laxton and Crundall (2018), is less challenging than the realistic stimuli used in the current studies, and places fewer demands on visual search, leading to an overestimation of drowning-detection performance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In that study, only one response was allowed, and this led to a decrease in the amount of data for all nonlifeguards (potentially over-estimating the differences between the two groups). Allowing multiple responses to trials removes this systematic bias and provides a more conservative comparison across groups (Laxton et al, 2020).…”

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Search for a distressed swimmer in a dynamic, real-world environment.

Laxton¹,

Guest²,

Howard³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Visual search is increasingly being explored in dynamic, real-world environments. This includes swimming pools, where lifeguards have shown superior drowning detection in simulated environments. Here we explored if lifeguard superiority is observed in real-life scenes of a busy swimming pool. Experiment 1 required participants to identify real-life distressed swimmers in clips of busy pool activity via a touchscreen interface. Experiment 2 sought to replicate the first study, with the inclusion of eye-movement measures.Experiment 3 varied the methodology, using an occlusion method where clips were frozen and blurred shortly after target onset. The results demonstrated an experience effect, with lifeguards detecting distressed swimmers more often and faster than non-lifeguards. No clear differences were found in the eye-movements between groups; thus, we cannot conclude that the lifeguards' faster responses are due to better scanning strategies. The different methodological approaches revealed the occlusion method to have the larger effect size, supporting the growing evidence that occlusion may be a better test for dynamic target detection than traditional response-time tests. This research demonstrates that the clear lifeguard experience effect generalises to real-life pool environments with a large number of swimmers and real incidents. It could be used to inform lifeguard training tools and assessments.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Section: Assessing Lifeguards' Visual Search Skillsmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Search for a distressed swimmer in a dynamic, real-world environment.

Laxton¹,

Guest²,

Howard³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

An exploration into the contributing cognitive skills of lifeguard visual search

Laxton

Mackenzie

Crundall

2022

Applied Cognitive Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Lifeguard drowning detection in swimming pools and beach settings is influenced by experience. The current experiment explores the cognitive skills that might underlie this experience effect. Lifeguard and non-lifeguard performance in a domain-free multiple object avoidance (MOA) task and a partially domain-free functional field of view (FFOV) task was compared to performance on an occlusion-based drowning detection task. Lifeguards performed better than non-lifeguards on the MOA task and the FFOV central task (identifying whether an isolated swimmer was drowning).However, only performance in the central FFOV task was associated with performance in the occlusion-based drowning detection task, and this was the only part of the two tasks that was not domain-free. These results suggest lifeguard drowning detection is mainly driven through the learned ability to process behaviours of drowning swimmers quicker than non-lifeguards. Therefore, it may be possible to train novices' ability to detect drowning swimmers through an exposure task.

show abstract

Intense classification training to increase the detection of drowning swimmers

Laxton

Howard

Guest

et al. 2023

Applied Cognitive Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Lifeguards engage in a continuous process of deciding whether swimmers are in danger or not. The variety of behaviours that distressed swimmers show makes it difficult to impart declarative knowledge to this effect during lifeguard training. As an alternative, we propose a novel training tool that requires novice participants to rapidly categorise 3-s video clips of real-life swimmers as either 'safe' or 'drowning'. A control group also completed a sham intervention, with surfers that may 'fall'. Due to the complex nature of swimming pools, a scaffolded training approach was employed, which gradually increased the amount of background information over subsequent training rounds. Results demonstrated that the drowning classification training improved responses in a subsequent drowning detection test, compared with the active control-group. The scaffolded approach appeared to prepare participants for processing swimmers in the drowning-detection test. The results provide a foundation for a novel training protocol to improve lifeguard skills.

show abstract

Visual search for drowning swimmers: Investigating the impact of lifeguarding experience

Cited by 7 publications

References 51 publications

Search for a distressed swimmer in a dynamic, real-world environment.

Search for a distressed swimmer in a dynamic, real-world environment.

An exploration into the contributing cognitive skills of lifeguard visual search

Intense classification training to increase the detection of drowning swimmers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About