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Introduction
Police officers at any time may be faced
with situations which are potentially dangerous and which may pose
a significant safety risk to themselves and others. In the course of
their normal patrols, police offices may encounter individuals who are
armed and may well be very dangerous. Indeed police offices can be faced
with a dilemma regarding what to do in such situations. Specifically,
police officers must quickly and accurately determine whether an individual
they confront is holding a dangerous weapon, a gun for example, or is
simply holding an innocuous object, such as a cell phone or a wallet.
This judgment can have life-or-death consequences for both police
officers and the public. For example, if the police officer decides
that an armed individual is not holding a gun, and the police officer
does not react appropriately, they may risk being shot. On the other
hand, if the police officer decides that an unarmed individual is holding
a gun, and the police officer is too quick to draw his or her own weapon,
the public is placed at unwarranted risk. Because mistakes in such situations
can have such potentially dire consequences, it is imperative that police
officers make such judgments quickly and accurately.
The goal of this lab is for you to try your hand at the police officer’s
dilemma. In this lab, you will see a series of pictures of various locations.
A few seconds after the background location appears on the screen, an individual
will appear in the foreground. The person will either be holding a
gun or some other innocuous object. Your job is to quickly and accurately
determine whether the person is holding a gun or is not holding a gun.
Before doing the actual task, however, you first need to practice distinguishing
objects in a background picture as quickly as possible. In the practice
task, a background picture will appear on
the screen, followed by the appearance of either a small cube or sphere
in the foreground. Using just the index finger of your right hand, press one of two adjacent keys on the keyboard to indicate your response. If the object that appears is a cube, press
the period "." key as quickly as possible. If the object that appears
is a sphere, press the comma "," key as quickly as possible. Below the picture, the
two categories, “cube” and "sphere" with the
period "." and comma "," key labels will always remain on the screen. The categories
(with the corresponding keys) printed above the picture will help remind you
which key to press. Remember, you need to use the index finger of your right hand to make all responses and keep your finger between the two keys (comma and period) between trials. If you are using a tablet computer for this task, simply click the labels with your index finger.
You have literally
a split second to decide if the object is a cube or a sphere. After each
trial, you will receive feedback about whether you made the correct or
incorrect decision, or if you took too long to make your judgment. After
10 trials you will be given feedback regarding your average response
time and the total number of errors you made. Remember that your task
is to be as quick and as accurate as possible. You should continue to
do practice trials until you can do 10 trials with no more than 1 error within
the time allotted before you continue on to the task.
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