Is het kijkgedrag van agenten van een speciale eenheid beter dan die van reguliere politie agenten? Is tactisch kijkgedrag te trainen of is het een kwestie van ervaring? Moet je naar het gezicht kijken of naar de handen?
Ik haal wat punten uit de studie maar vertrouw niet alleen op mijn interpretatie en lees zelf het hele artikel. De quotes zijn uit het artikel en de referenties kun je vinden in oorspronkelijke artikel.
Wat is tactisch kijkgedrag?
“Police officers should be focused more on certain “dangerous” areas of a suspect’s body than other “harmless” regions. For instance, an armed attacker trying to kill or critically injure an officer will most likely use their hands to do so. Firearms, knives, other dangerous objects, and even most detonators for explosives must be operated manually to pose an immediate threat to an officer’s life.
Therefore, it is crucial that police officers shift their gaze and focus their visual attention on the hands and potential weapon concealments (mostly in the hip region) of a suspect. Even seemingly lowlevel routine situations can escalate instantly as it takes a trained assailant only a fraction of a second to draw a concealed gun.
Therefore, we suspect that police officers with a lower level of training are more inclined to have their gaze and attention “grabbed” by salient stimuli (like an angry person’s face) as part of unconscious bottom-up processes. On the other hand, highly trained officers seem to have the toolkit to suppress these processes and actively shift both gaze and attention (top-down) on tactically crucial areas”.
Wat moet je weten over het visuele systeem?
“Considering the fact that more than one-third of the human brain is devoted to visual perception, it becomes apparent that visual perception dominates sensory information processing. Visual perception does occur automatically in the form of not only bottom-up driven processes but also top-down.
For example, attention and domain-specific knowledge can initiate active gaze shifts or determine what information to extract. Therefore, active visual search, stimulus identification, and assessment play a significant role for human beings in perceiving their environment and interacting with it “
Training, ervaring en kijkgedrag
Previous research indicates that experienced and well-trained police officers display superior gaze patterns and reaction times, cope with anxiety better, and generally achieve better results in threat detection than naïve individuals or novice officers…
A major difference in how expert and near-expert police officers control their gaze in tactical situations is utilizing the aforementioned quiet eye technique.
Another factor is the anticipation of the location from which a concealed gun is most likely to be drawn.
Therefore, we suspect that police officers with a lower level of training are more inclined to have their gaze and attention “grabbed” by salient stimuli (like an angry person’s face) as part of unconscious bottom-up processes. On the other hand, highly trained officers seem to have the toolkit to suppress these processes and actively shift both gaze and attention (top-down) on tactically crucial areas.
Ogen of handen
Een interessant onderwerp: is oog contact nodig voor een goede (de escalerende ) interactie en zo ja hoe verhoudt zich dit tot tactisch kijkgedrag?
“A person’s face is a very salient stimulus, and some facial expressions attract both the observer’s gaze and attention more than others .
Although a suspect’s facial expressions may allow for the interpretation of emotions and respectful eye contact may help to de-escalate in some situations, merely focusing on the face cannot predict an upcoming attack.
Neglecting a suspect’s crucial hands/hip region while focusing on their salient facial expressions may lead to severe injuries or even death in high-stress situations. Therefore, visual attention and situational awareness are key to minimizing the risks in potentially life-threatening situations.
Even when not actively fixating on critical regions, officers can still shift their visual attention covertly. This might be preferable in a situation where a single officer interacts with a suspect and avoiding eye contact to fixate the hands/hip region could escalate the situation. For two or more officers, it is most advisable to have one officer addressing the suspect and trying to de-escalate the situation while the other officer(s) focuses entirely on the critical regions of the suspect and the surroundings. “
Hoe sneller hoe beter?
“Second, we did not measure accuracy, and we therefore did not control for a speed-accuracy tradeoff in shooting behavior. Faster reaction times tend to go hand-in-hand with lower accuracy (Grünbaum et al. 2017; Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans 2010). “
Tactisch gedrag
“Third, and quite surprisingly, scenario C (the scenario in which the suspect sits in the driver’s seat of the getaway vehicle) exposed tactical differences in how tactical officers and patrol officers handled the situation.
This led to noticeable differences in the observed behavior compared to the other scenarios. While all MP and UP aimed their guns directly at the suspect, some TU took an atypical shooting stance to avoid a “friendly fire” situation in which they might have endangered the other officer on the driver’s side of the vehicle. This atypical shooting stance takes more time but is safer for other officers and bystanders in a realistic scenario.
Drie hypotheses
1. We expect officers of a tactical unit to display longer fixation durations on a suspect’s hands/hip region than patrol officers (hypothesis 1).
2. Vice versa, we expect patrol officers to display longer fixation durations on the facial area of a suspect than officers of a tactical unit (hypothesis 2).
3. Furthermore, we presume that officers of a tactical unit react faster, and therefore shoot earlier, than patrol officers when a suspect draws a hidden firearm (hypothesis 3).
Resultaten
The experiment revealed significant differences in gaze patterns between highly trained officers of a tactical unit and patrol officers with high practical experience.
Officers with a high level of tactical training showed superior gaze patterns by focusing more on the critical hands/hip region and less on a suspect’s face.
These results indicate that training has a significantly higher impact on efficient tactical gaze control in potentially dangerous law enforcement situations than practical routine. However, shooting times did not show any significant differences among the groups.
Bron
Heusler, B., Sutter, C. Gaze Control in Law Enforcement: Comparing a Tactical Police Unit to Patrol Officers. J Police Crim Psych 37, 777–793 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09412-z