From Force Science Research Center:
Force Science News #60
December 4, 2006
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TUNNEL VISION AND TUNNEL HEARING - TIME TO UPDATE
How can an officer in a gunfight be looking at their sights and not see
and respond instantly to a change in a subject's behavior? Why couldn't
the officer see the other person? He has to be lying when he said he
didn't see the person drop the gun! Why can't he tell us how many shots
his partner fired? Didn't he hear the commands that were shouted at him?
These are common remarks regarding an officer's behavior and memory that
can arise from anyone judging an officer's behavior in a gunfight.
Law Enforcement has used the terms "tunnel vision" and "tunnel hearing"
to explain how law enforcement officers process information under high
stress conditions - from gunfights and high speed pursuits to tough
physical encounters. These terms are used to explain why officers were
able to clearly explain some elements of the encounter while literally
being blind to other apparently obvious elements. Although these terms
have occasionally raised the criticism of apologizing for ineptness or
deceit by the officer, most law enforcement investigators, officials,
the court system and civilians are aware of what these terms mean and
tend to give them some credibility.
LITTLE KNOWN FACTS:
What is generally unknown and needs to be understood -- is how and why
these phenomenon work, how common they are, and what a huge body of
psychological research and experience under-girds them. For instance
officers and investigators appear not to know that tunnel vision and
tunnel hearing can be mutually exclusive. If an officer in a high stress
situation is strongly visually focused on something and experiencing
"tunnel vision" they cannot simultaneously be experiencing "tunnel
hearing".
They can of course have a "soft focus" across all the senses or even
within the same sense, for example visually scanning a scene, but once
the officer's attention is strongly directed to one event in a sensory
system, they cannot simultaneously process information either in the
same sensory system or in another sensory system. They may experience
them in sequence, for instance shift from "tunnel vision" to "tunnel
hearing" and then back again to "tunnel vision", but they can't
simultaneously do both. Officers
may believe they can do both because they may fill in the blanks about
what has occurred. Given time, and based on the context and change in
what the officer perceives, they link events and "fill in the blanks"
and thus create a memory for events rather than "recording" an actual
memory of the event. For instance, if something occurred in the visual
sense while the officer's attention was diverted for even a fraction of
a second, the officer would be incapable of recalling what happened
during that period and may not even believe something occurred while
their attention was distracted, despite clear and factual forensic
evidence to the opposite.
Another fascinating but little known fact is that thoughts can have the
same tunneling effect as events. An officer who is psychologically
recoiling when confronted with an immediate and direct threat to their
life could be "attentionally tunneling" into their own thoughts and can
be blind to anything that is going on outside of their own head. Or, an
officer who is desperately trying to figure out how to unjam their gun
in the middle of a close gunfight is also attentionally tunneled, except
it is to solving a
problem, instead of the movement or action of the threat that may be
simultaneously occurring. They are still incapable of seeing what they
are not focused on at that moment.
Despite the fact that law enforcement has chiefly chosen to use these
terms in reference to high stress encounters, and some individuals
erroneously believe that high levels of anger and/or fear are necessary
for "tunnel vision" and "tunnel hearing" to occur, the reality is that
all human beings are experiencing these phenomenon at some level and to
some degree all of the time. Anger and fear of course will generate
these phenomena but attentional tunneling actually occurs at any
emotional level. All that is necessary is for the individual to begin
to concentrate on something and the phenomenon starts to appear.
"Inattentional blindness" is the name for the process of rejecting
information coming into a sensory system because of a focus on something
that is more important at that particular point in time.
Both "tunnel vision and hearing" are part of how human beings are able
to pay attention in a world that bombards us with stimuli and our own
mind preoccupies us with our own thoughts. Without an ability to
concentrate and focus we would be flooded with information and be
functioning as if we had an attention deficit disorder. The fundamental
principle is that we need to select and focus our attention to whatever
is important to us - including our own thoughts, and the higher the
level of stress the greater is our need to focus to get important
information.
Also the greater is the need to exclude the information that is not
important. Functionally, as long as the stress level is low enough, we
can have a "soft" focus across many senses and or thoughts. This is how
we can multi-task, particularly with routine non-stressful activities.
Once we begin to target on something we quickly loose the ability to
acquire and process anything other than what we are focused on, until we
change our focus. This focus does not have to include any emotional
component. The
tennis player, the chess player or the student focusing on completing an
assignment all can demonstrate amazing powers of concentration that
include significant "tunnel vision" and "tunnel hearing" and a
significant blindness to anything other than that on which they are
concentrating. Has the reader ever put on a CD to play and then been so
preoccupied on a task they didn't hear a single song?
In baseball, it takes 54/100ths of a second for a fastball traveling at
90 mph to travel from the pitcher's mound to home plate. A baseball
player who is focused on hitting the ball, whether under the stress of
competition or just during practice, is usually so attentionally limited
by their focus on the grip of the ball in the pitcher's hand, the motion
of the pitcher's arm and the initial path of the ball, that during that
half a second - if they truly are focused - they would not be able to
inform us about anything else going on in the playing field, including
the feeling of the bat in their own hand. This is usually not important
for them and no one is concerned about this but when the same phenomenon
occurs to an officer in a gunfight it becomes of major significance.
Those concerned with evaluating an officer's performance had better
understand how and why this process occurs if they are going to
objectively judge that officer.
TUNNEL VISION -THE BRAIN AT WORK
The process of selection and attention has always been understood by
psychologists to be a cognitive or brain process issue and not a sensory
process. For instance, science tells us the eye appears to be
continually reporting all the sensations to the brain, the brain selects
from the sense what it needs and actively rejects or suppresses the rest
of the information (leading to the impression of tunneling in that
particular sense). But the brain is at work doing this - not the eye.
Therefore the name "tunnel vision" is very descriptive, but misleading.
Psychologists refer to this "focus" as "selective attention". The
process of rejecting information is termed "inattentional blindness".
Psychologists have been able to demonstrate in the lab, under non-stress
conditions, that you can
be looking directly at something and literally be blind to it if you are
not attentionally focused on it.
The reader will note that "selective attention" does not make any
reference to any specific sense such as vision or hearing and the reason
is that attention can be directed to anywhere in the person's thoughts,
body or to any sense. Under intense focus, we are able to report on
selected information in one sense or a thought but are "blind" to the
information from other senses or thoughts.
This process of selecting some information and rejecting or being blind
to others is a normal and constant feature of human performance at all
levels. The reader may note that their attention to this article has
inattentionally blinded them to the feeling of their clothes on their
body or the chair they are sitting on. Even focusing on a thought in
your head has a significant impairing effect on processing sensory
information. In
Force Science News #54, in which we reported on the limitations of
emotionally charged cell phone conversations, we noted that Dr. Paul
Atchley and other researchers found that when drivers were focused on
just emotional words spoken into their cell phones they were so
oblivious to information outside their head and their vehicle that they
couldn't tell the difference between a dumpster by the side of the road
or a child starting to run out in front of them.
The reader may be aware of times when they were driving home, intently
focused on some deep personal issue, and were surprised to arrive at
home unaware of seeing or remembering any turn they made or light they
stopped at. This could only occur with a practiced behavior on a very
familiar course of travel but it can and does occur under conditions of
intense concentration, fatigue.
This brain process of focusing or "tunneling" (selective attention and
inattentional blindness) holds true for all humans, under most
conditions, but especially for officers engaged in emotionally intense
situations, such as pursuit driving, fighting, or shooting.
TUNNELING HAS BREADTH AND DEPTH:
A further fact is that "attention" can contain elements of both breadth
and depth and the focus could be on points both inside and outside the
person. "Selective attention" when directed outside the person could be
directed to any location in physical space. For example, a person in a
forest could select to visually focus in general on the forest, any tree
in the forest, near or far, left or right. A focus or attention could
also be internal and so the person could then focus internally and
narrowly on their feeling of being in the forest. They could also focus
internally and broadly on the sense of movement through the forest.
Understanding and being able to explain officer performance in a high
stress encounter needs a knowledge base of much more than just "tunnel
vision" and "tunnel hearing." We really to get much more sophisticated
in our understanding of human performance and use of that information so
that training, investigation and explanations to the public can all be
improved.
RESEARCH NOTE:
FSRC has just completed a groundbreaking study involving the London
Metropolitan Police that is focused on an attempt to apply this
understanding of attention, perception and memory to a law enforcement
situation.
Results are expected to be available to be reported to London
Metropolitan Police in early 2007.
For Further Information:
Neideffer has developed a quadrant of attention, that with limitations,
helps to further explain "attentional tunneling." Neideffer, is reported
on Schmidt and Wrisberg's, Motor Learning and Control, published by
Human Kinetics.
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(c) 2006: Force Science Research Center, www.forcescience.org. Reprints
allowed by request. For reprint clearance, please e-mail:
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>From NRA-ILA:
NRA-ILA Grassroots Alert Vol. 13, No. 48 12/08/06
States with updates this issue: New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
WE NEED YOU ON NRA-ILA's "FrontLines"T
Formerly known as the NRA-ILA Grassroots Network, NRA-ILA FrontLinesT is
the most comprehensive grassroots program ever undertaken by NRA-ILA.
Everything associated with this program is free! We are looking for
your active participation, not your money.
Those who join NRA-ILA FrontLines will act as the tip of NRA-ILA's arrow
in defense of our freedom. After enrolling in this free program, you
will be contacted by NRA-ILA and/or your local NRA-ILA Election
Volunteer Coordinator (EVC) to discuss your role in defending our
liberty. Your EVC is a local NRA member, who acts as the liaison
between NRA members and gun owners in your area and the campaigns of
pro-gun candidates. Your EVC also coordinates local volunteers to
assist with NRA-ILA's legislative efforts. By working with your EVC,
you will assist us in formalizing networks of pro-gun volunteers in
every pocket of the country!
NRA-ILA FrontLines will draw from the "grasstops" of the pro-Second
Amendment community. We are looking only for those willing and prepared
to actively answer the call to defend our rights! Some of the many
activities in which NRA-ILA FrontLines members will actively
participate--either with their EVC or on their own--include:
Campaign Activities
Registering pro-gun voters
Writing letters to the editor
Yard sign & bumper sticker distribution
Working at campaign headquarters
Literature drops
Precinct walks
Phone banks
Get Out The Vote
Election Day activities
Legislative Activities
Contacting lawmakers in person, by phone, letter, e-mail, and fax
Attending town hall meetings
Writing letters to the editor
NRA succeeds only due to the active participation of its members and
supporters in the defense of our Second Amendment rights. Your time
commitment to NRA-ILA FrontLines will be minimal, but the dividends your
participation will pay in defense of the Second Amendment will be immense!
If you want to become an active leader in this fight, then NRA-ILA
FrontLines is for you! Please join "NRA-ILA FrontLines"T TODAY! All
you need to do to enroll in the free NRA-ILA FrontLines program is fill
out a brief, modified NRA-ILA Volunteer Information Form. To request
this form, contact ILA Grassroots at (800) 393-8683 or go to
www.NRAILA.org, and choose "Sign Up To Join NRA-ILA FrontLines Volunteers."
Ask yourself, if preserving our Second Amendment rights isn't worth
volunteering a few hours of your time, what is?
With the holidays upon us, give yourself the gift of freedom by
enrolling in the FrontLines program and encourage your family, friends,
and fellow firearm owners to do the same. It will be the most important
gift you can give, and best of all-it's free!
A LOOK AT THE STATES
(***For all of the action items below, you can find contact information
for your legislators by visiting www.NRAILA.org, clicking the "Take
Action" icon, and then clicking the "Write Your Representatives" icon.
As always, thank you for your support.***)
States with updates this issue: New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
NEW JERSEY
Ignoring its own 2004 ruling establishing guidelines for implementing
bear hunting seasons, the New Jersey Supreme Court last week declined to
review the political decision of Governor Jon Corzine (D) and DEP
Commissioner Lisa Jackson to ignore those guidelines and gut the
scheduled 2006 New Jersey bear hunt. A 2006 bear hunt had been
authorized as part of a comprehensive bear management policy adopted by
DEP in 2005. The move ignores the public safety crisis created by New
Jersey's out-of-control bear population, which has been improperly
managed for more than three decades. Recent years have seen a string of
terrifying bear attacks in the region, including the gruesome death of a
five-month old girl who was yanked head-first from her stroller by a
hungry bear and mauled to death in 2002, just a few miles from New
Jersey's northern border. Black bears have been sighted recently in each
of New Jersey's 21 counties, and represent a real threat to persons and
property.
OHIO
With strong support from Speaker of the House Jon Husted (R-37),
Governor Bob Taft's (R) veto of House Bill 347 was overridden by the
Ohio State House today by a vote of 71-21. HB 347, sponsored by
Representative Jim Aslanides (R-94), would create statewide preemption,
ensuring that firearm laws are uniform throughout the state. Currently,
43 states have similar laws. Passing statewide preemption will
eliminate problems for all gun owners who have been unduly burdened by
local ordinances such as Columbus' "assault weapons ban." In addition,
this legislation will correct a number of problems that have surfaced
during the past year for Right-to-Carry permit holders. The most common
complaint for license holders has been the "plain sight" requirement in
a motor vehicle. HB 347 will eliminate this requirement. HB 347 now
heads to the State Senate. Please contact your State Senator at (614)
466-4900 today and urge him or her to vote to override Governor Taft's
veto of this crucial legislation.
PENNSYLVANIA
On November 29, Governor Ed Rendell (D) signed House Bill 2563,
sponsored by Representative Ed Staback (D-115), into law. This
legislation will allow individuals with a valid Right-to-Carry permit to
carry a firearm for personal protection while engaged in any hunting
activity or other activity regulated by Title 34 (Game & Wildlife) of
the Pennsylvania Code. This new law takes effect in 60 days.
Currently, any individual with a carry permit, including law enforcement
officers, must disarm before archery hunting and spotlighting. HB 2563
will remove any requirements for individuals who are permitted to carry
a concealed firearm for protection to disarm while engaged in any
activity regulated in the Game Code, including all hunting seasons. The
bill specifically states that concealed firearms are for personal
protection only, and are not to be used to hunt or harvest any wildlife
unless the Game Code authorizes them.
TEXAS
There will be a special run-off election for the 23rd congressional
district on Tuesday, December 12. With opponents of our Right to Keep
and Bear Arms claiming that the political tide is turning in their
favor, this run-off election is more important than ever. For
information on NRA-PVF candidate endorsements, NRA members are
encouraged to call the NRA-ILA Grassroots Division at (800) 392-VOTE
(8683). Please be sure to go to the polls on December 12, and "Vote
Freedom First"!
--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
