The influence of experience upon information-sampling and decision-making behaviour during risk assessment in military personnel

Abstract

We examined the influence of experience upon information-sampling and decisionmaking behaviour in a group of military personnel as they conducted risk assessments of scenes photographed from patrol routes during the recent conflict in Afghanistan. Their risk assessment was based on an evaluation of Potential Risk Indicators during examination of each scene. We found that both participant groups were equally likely to fixate Potential Risk Indicators, demonstrating similarity in the selectivity of their information-sampling. However, the inexperienced participants made more revisits to Potential Risk Indicators, had longer response times, and were more likely to decide that the scenes contained a high level of risk. Together, these results suggest that experience primarily modulates decision-making behaviour. We discuss potential routes to train personnel to conduct risk assessments in a more similar manner to experienced participants.Acknowledgements:

Prevalence in Visual Search: From the Clinic to the Lab and Back Again

“…We should also keep in mind that medical imaging is far from the only context where prevalence, especially low prevalence, is an issue. I have already mentioned the airport XRST and satellite image search tasks, but consider also the pest-control expert searching for cockroach feces (Varadínová, Frynta, Aulický, & Stejskal, 2015), the lifeguard keeping an eye out for drowning victims (Lanagan-Leitzel, Skow, & Moore, 2015), the military officer assessing the likelihood of IEDs (Godwin et al, 2015), or even the automobile driver searching for motorcycles (Beanland, Lenné, & Underwood, 2014); all of these observers are facing a low-prevalence search task. Knowledge gained in the psychological laboratory or the medical clinic could potentially be useful in improving search in these other domains, and studies of drivers or lifeguards (for example) could help contribute to improving detection of cervical cancer in Pap smears.…”

Does effective gaze behavior lead to enhanced performance in a complex error-detection cockpit task?

“…Based on this theory, the faster and more efficient information processing of experts should lead to shorter fixation durations, or dwell times (i.e., the accumulated duration of fixations in a specific area of interest), since it is assumed that experts are able to extract more meaningful information from those shorter fixations or dwells [ 14 ]. Evidence for the long-term working memory theory was observed in a wide range of expertise domains: (i) In radiology, shorter dwell times on nodules were reported in experts for successful diagnoses [ 18 ]; (ii) in sports, expert judges in rhythmic gymnastics were reported to use shorter fixation durations on the scene for error-detection in the performance of the gymnasts [ 19 ], and (iii) in the military, experts were reported to use shorter fixation durations during scene evaluation for risk assessment [ 20 ].…”

The importance of search strategy for finding targets in open terrain

“…Future studies should seek to show how the search strategies that we have outlined generalize or are modified by stimulus and environmental conditions. For example, whether systematicity survives under conditions of very low target prevalence (Godwin, Menneer, Cave & Donnelly, 2010 a) or target absence (Schwark, MacDonald, Sandry, & Dolgov, 2013 ), changes in the size and shape of the search area (Smith et al, 2008 ), variations in target type and identity (Menneer, Barrett, Phillips, Donnelly, & Cave, 2007 ), and the presence of distraction and the possibility of concealment (Godwin, Liversedge, et al, 2015 ). Furthermore, how dyadic working influences the effectiveness of these strategies in enhancing target detection for multiple targets placed in open ground.…”

“…Second, unlike terminating search following the detection of a single target (Tuddenham, 1962 ) or when the rewards of continuing foraging in one area are less than those that might follow from moving to a new area (Cain et al, 2012 ; Wolfe, 2013 ), searchers must attempt to search spatial locations exhaustively (by which we mean try their best to search as many possible target locations as they can). Third, if we consider real-world situations, such as police searching for clues to a crime or soldiers searching for IEDs, searchers have to consider all potential instances of all potential target types (Godwin et al, 2015 ), rather than finding well-defined targets matching a simple template. The present study is a first effort in trying to understand how exhaustive search is in these types of task.…”