History Trails Assist in the Detection of Hostile Intentions

Abstract

Detecting hostile intentions from movements alone is important in many real world scenarios. The current paradigm investigated how visual history trails might aid in the detection of two hostile movement behaviors on a simple display. Participants controlled movement of an icon representing their own ship, while six other ships moved around them. A single ship displayed one of two target hostile behaviors: shadowing (mimicking usership’s movements) or hunting (approaching the usership). Moving their own ship, participants attempted to identify the hostile ship and behavior with history trails that reflected the past nine movements, and without history trails. Detection accuracy was superior with history trails present. History trails also provided a notable benefit for detecting hunting when the hostile ship started farther away from the usership. History trails may be a suitable aid for improving detection of hostile behaviors, but even in this simplified scenario, detection rates remained far from optimal.