Evaluation of the utility of the theory of signal detection for target acquisition studies.

Abstract

Abstract : This study explored the effects of instruction and target-to- background contrast, within the framework of signal detection theory, on the performance of Army aviators during a target acquisition task. Its goal was to determine whether the typical measures of target acquisition performance (reaction time and frequency of hits) would be influenced by the type of experimental instructions given to the test participants, and whether the signal detection parameters of bias and sensitivity would reflect instructional and target-to-background contrast differences, respectively. In addition, a critical goal was to determine whether the signal detection measures could be used, by means of an analysis of covariance, to remove the bias effects of instructional difference from the reaction time and frequency of hit data. A target acquisition task during a simulated helicopter pop-up maneuver at one thousand feet altitude was presented, with a 30-second exposure time. The observer's task was to search for a single 20-foot military tank in various field locations, and at a slant range of 2500 feet. The scenes were presented with and without targets, in order to obtain an observer's hit rate and false alarm rate, the basic procedural requirement for signal detection theory.