Can Cognitive Training Improve Shoot/Don’t-Shoot Performance? Evidence from Live Fire Exercises

Abstract

Police, security, and military personnel have—at most—seconds to make a shoot/don’t-shoot decision despite the life-or-death consequences of their actions. Recent research suggests that shoot/don’t-shoot errors (e.g., commission errors of shooting at nonhostile or unarmed civilians) can be linked to specific cognitive abilities, and these errors could be reduced through targeted cognitive training. However, these studies were conducted with untrained personnel, conducted with simulated weapons, or conducted with untrained personnel using simulated weapons. Before integrating cognitive training into real-world police and military firearm training, there should be evidence that training benefits also apply to trained shooters using live weapons and live ammunition. Here we assessed differences following cognitive training for trained law enforcement officers who performed pretraining and posttraining shooting tasks with live ammunition and their service-issued weapons. Our findings provide further support that targeted cognitive interventions can significantly improve firearm safety and efficacy for armed professionals.

When the response does not match the threat: The relationship between threat assessment and behavioural response in ambiguous lethal force decision-making

“…Individual differences in threat assessment provided a poor predictor, or marginal predictor at best, as to whether the individual would respond with lethal force. This finding aligns with literature suggesting that lethal force errors against unarmed civilians may arise from failures in inhibitory control rather than threat assessment (Biggs et al, 2015; Hamilton et al, 2019; Wilson et al, 2013, 2015). Likewise, for ambiguous images, threat assessment was not a primary predictor of a lethal force response.…”

“…Other factors that commonly affect response inhibition also influence lethal force scenarios, such as the ratio of shoot and no-shoot trials in a task (Rubia et al, 2001;Wilson et al, 2014Wilson et al, , 2016. Furthermore, evidence suggests a causal link between inhibitory control failures and unintended casualties as response inhibition training has been demonstrated to improve shoot/don't-shoot performance (Biggs et al, 2015;Hamilton et al, 2019).…”

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

“…Foremost, the shooting scenarios provide a high degree of ecological validity because the simulations used realistic weaponry and situations designed for military training purposes. Prior work has used various tasks ranging from mock firearms (Wilson et al, 2013), gaming simulations (Biggs et al, 2015), or single image live fire trials (Hamilton et al, 2019). Full shooting scenarios run from initial contact to neutralising a hostile.…”

“…The inability to inhibit responses in a sustained attention task has been linked to increased shooting errors using correlative evidence or task manipulations (Wilson et al, 2013(Wilson et al, , 2015. Additional evidence further supported a causal link between this cognitive ability and lethal force errors given that inhibitory control training has been successful in reducing the chance of inflicting unintended casualties (Biggs et al, 2015;Hamilton et al, 2019).…”

Effects of Acute Stress on Psychophysiology in Armed Tactical Occupations: A Narrative Review

“…Cognitive overload and/or fatigue leads to a deterioration in tactical performance [10,56], and it is often the result of two key stressors impacting decision-making, these being time-sensitivity and information overload [54]. For police officers, these stressors can complicate one of the most crucial decisions an officer may have to make, a decision with the potential for the most catastrophic consequences, being the decision to shoot or not to shoot [57].…”