First, thanks to the researchers for their commitment to improving UOF training. The observational study (1) fills a literature gap by exam-ining performance (i.e., shoot/no-shoot errors) and stress physiology among 187 police officers during virtual (i.e., video-based) and live UOF scenarios as part of their agency’s annual requalification assessment.
What where the results?
While moderately low rates of lethal force errors werre observed overall, there were significantly fewer errors in live (0.81%) versus video scenarios (5.92%).
Both conditions elicited significant stress physiology, as measured by heart rate (HR) relative to rest, with higher maximum heart rate in live scenarios.
What are my questions?
1.The use of heart rate (HR) reactivity (i.e., increases relative to resting HR) as a biomarker.
Quote from the article:” The use of HR is the most valid non-invasive biomarker of autonomic arousal given that it is more robust to respiration and movement artifacts that render other cardio-vascular (e.g., heart rate variability) and neuroendocrine biomarkers (e.g., cortisol) unreliable during live-action events”.
I am not an exercise physiologist so may be I am misunderstanding. But surely the HF is also very dependent on, for example, training level, physical exertion and so on? And also on breathing because breathing in too much (or over-breathing or bad exhaling) stimulates the sympathetic, right?
2. What are explanations that “Despite greater increases in autonomic arousal during live scenarios, officers committed fewer lethal UOF errors compared to video simulations during their agency’s annual requalification evaluation”?
3. Design of scenario’s and ecological psychology.
In the article the researchers state that: “ Especially for evaluations that bear professional consequences (i.e., qualification or requalification), the chosen modality should elicit specified and pre-determined skills and approximate the operational conditions under which the skills will be used”.
Especially the words “specified and pre-determined skills” make me wonder if this is consistent with the ecological view of motor learning. Solutions are not predetermined because they come about in the interaction between mover and context and task. Moving skillfully involves coming up with new solutions to new problems, not just repeating the same old solution. Is that still the case when there are “specified and pre-determined skills” we want to see in the simulation?
4. Mental load.
Do the measures we use for autonomic arousal capture ‘mental load’ and related concepts as working memory? Cognition and metacognition (including WM) seem very important to me and I am not sure how they relate to measures like HR/HRV? I use the omega wave app which measures the central nervous system (brain) seperately for example.
5. Pause and reflect.
Quote from the article:”The duration of both simulation types can be manipulated to elicit fast decision-making in unpredictable encounters or can be ‘paused’ to reflect on officers’ internal cognitive skills and thought processes (DiNota & Huhta, 2019)”.
This is of course a way to do it. But it is under the assumption that there are internal cognitive skills and thought processes going on. In ecological psychology or even in gary Klein NDM under high stress there is maybe more of implicit processes going on like ‘direct perception action coupling’ or pattern recognition without explicit thought???
6. Realism.
Quote from the article:” Despite efforts at designing highly immersive and engaging environments, artificial sensory cues presented by virtual simulations can limit an officer’s sense of presence, undermining scenario realism and evaluation/training objectives”.
In research from Prof Roelofs and their VR ‘game’ (2) the found that the VR should not be as realistic as possible. So how do the authors think about realism in VR ?
7. Priming.
Great point that “ overrepresentation of lethal encounters may condition increased weapon use (Giessing, 2021), underscoring the need to evaluate a broad variety of UOF-related skills including situational awareness/assessment and social-verbal skills
1. Paula M. Di Nota, Juha-Matti Huhta, Evelyn C. Boychuk & Judith P. Andersen (2023) Police lethal force errors and stress physiology during video and live evaluation simulations, Police Practice and Research, DOI: 10.1080/15614263.2023.2237624
2. https://www.train-de-trainer.org/2023/11/freezing-for-better-performance/