A Survey of the Research on Human Factors Related to Lethal Force Encounters

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the lecture notes.

Brain

The actual organ contained in the skull that coordinates sensation and intellect.

Mind

Consciousness/thought or intellect/memory.

Schemas and Expectations

A set of cognitive frameworks that color and form our view of the world, potentially distorting perception and recollection of critical incidents.

Type I Error (False Negative)

Rejecting something that should have been accepted, such as failing to identify a suspect with a firearm.

Type II Error (False Positive)

Incorrectly perceiving that a suspect has a gun when none exists, leading to a deadly force response.

Receive

The first step in the three "R's" of memory: Information must first be received to be remembered.

Retain

The second step in the three "R's" of memory: the ability to store or retain the information

Recall

The third of the three "R's" of memory: the ability to recall information.

Selective Attention (Tunneling)

The brain's focus on a particular internal or environmental cue, potentially failing to observe other important information.

Inattentional Blindness

Failure to see what is obviously directly in the line of vision due to attentional focus on a competing visual input.

Fixate

Intently focus, on some element of the incident, resulting in a very specific and vivid, though not necessarily accurate, memory for a particular aspect of the incident while limiting their recollection of other facts

Recognition

Comparison of new information against old information, allowing for a simple yes or no query or stimulating the memory trace.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response

The body's characteristic sympathetic stress reactions, allocating all resources to the primary task of survival.

Central vision

Relies on the cones of the eye, which then leads to both high visual acuity for areas of primary attention and the ability to see color

Perspective

Defined in terms of an individual's physical location in space and, hence, their actual vantage point, or more generally, an individual's philosophical view of the world.

Contextual Cues

Cues that allow us to generalize from previous experiences to an incident, facilitating understanding, analysis, and reaction time.

Schemas

Patterns embedded in our brains that allow us to compare evolving information from an incident to similar situations.

Confabulation

The subconscious mind's tendency to "fill in the blanks" in an effort to make sense of our actions.

Contamination

The unintended influence of new information on a prior recollection, subconsciously altering the prior recollection to create a memory that "makes sense."

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of memory for events that occur up to two minutes prior to a traumatic event.

Hyper Amnesia

The fact that memory for emotionally charged events tends to improve over time.

Inoculation Training

Training that helps an officer compensate and respond under conditions of physiological and psychological arousal.