Effective Training for Target Identification Under Degraded Conditions

Abstract

This experiment explored the relevance of the psychological concept of overshadowing to military target identification training. The concept predicts that the most outstanding distinctive feature of a target will capture the attention of the trainee, who will pay little attention to other features. This prediction implies that soldiers will have a difficult time identifying degraded targets unless specifically trained on degraded targets. The experimental procedure was to force attention on more and more features of the targets by progressively covering the outstanding features. Results confirmed the relevance of overshadowing and suggested that most training should concentrate on degraded views. Psychologists interested in perception and in military target identification training are the intended audience for this report.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1979
Accession Number
ADA071085

Entities

People

  • John T. Cockrell

Organizations

  • U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Analysis Of Variance
  • Armored Vehicles
  • Army
  • Basic Training
  • Coverings
  • Identification
  • Images
  • Military Research
  • Military Training
  • Psychology
  • Social Sciences
  • Students
  • Trainees
  • Training
  • United States Military Academy
  • Vehicles
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Military Leadership and Professional Education.
  • Radar Systems Engineering.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.