Soldier-in-the-Loop Target Acquisition Performance Prediction Through 2001: Integration of Perceptual and Cognitive Models

Abstract : Modeling Soldier-in-the-loop target acquisition performance is necessary for the development of improved sensors, more effective training methods, and better war game simulations. Accurately modeling requires a detailed understanding of how the observer employs sensor information to acquire a target. This report takes a two-pronged approach to how future models can be improved by the sensible integration of human visual processing. One prong concerns basic research from the perceptual psychology community. Over the last few decades, this research has generated a detailed theoretical understanding of visual processing and decision making, based on visual information. The other prong concerns important models, modeling frameworks, and scene metrics from the military target acquisition community. Particular attention is paid to issues of clutter, the extendibility of the Johnson criteria, classical and neoclassical search frameworks, the selection of methods and performance metrics, and existing Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate models. Phenomena from perceptual psychology known to affect target acquisition are reviewed in terms of how target acquisition models do and do not account for them. Basic models of visual search are included as guides for how target acquisition models may incorporate some of these factors. Visual selective attention is recommended as a means for the theoretically meaningful inclusion of psychologically important factors into target acquisition modeling.