Effects of Ancillary Information upon Photointerpreter Performance

The effects of ancillary information upon photointerpreter performance were evaluated under four modes of system operation, and an assessment of the influence of a variety of “information” variables upon interpreter performance was carried out. Thirty-two trained surveillance officers identified single annotated targets within controlled and matched sets of imagery. The subjects' task was to provide a vector of probabilities associated with each possible identification of an item in their imagery. The probabilistic estimates represented the likelihood that a particular target name was the correct name for the item in the imagery. The results indicated that the provision of ancillary information enhanced accuracy of identification regardless of whether the information was qualitative or quantitative, and regardless of whether that information was presented simultaneous with or subsequent to the imagery. Furthermore, under the conditions of this study, the integration function proved to be best carried out by the interpreter, not by computer.