Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2021 Jun;27(2):352-368. doi: 10.1037/xap0000344. Epub 2021 Mar 22.
Visual search is increasingly being explored in dynamic, real-world environments. This includes swimming pools, where lifeguards have shown superior drowning detection in simulated environments. Here, we explored if lifeguard superiority is observed in real-life scenes of a busy swimming pool. Experiment 1 required participants to identify real-life distressed swimmers in clips of busy pool activity via a touchscreen interface. Experiment 2 sought to replicate the first study, with the inclusion of eye-movement measures. Experiment 3 varied the methodology, using an occlusion method where clips were frozen and blurred shortly after target onset. The results demonstrated an experience effect, with lifeguards detecting distressed swimmers more often and faster than nonlifeguards. No clear differences were found in the eye-movements between groups; thus, we cannot conclude that the lifeguards' faster responses are due to better scanning strategies. The different methodological approaches revealed the occlusion method to have the larger effect size, supporting the growing evidence that occlusion may be a better test for dynamic target detection than traditional response-time tests. This research demonstrates that the clear lifeguard experience effect generalizes to real-life pool environments with a large number of swimmers and real incidents. It could be used to inform lifeguard training tools and assessments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
视觉搜索在动态的真实环境中越来越受到关注。这包括游泳池，救生员在模拟环境中已经显示出对溺水者更好的察觉能力。在这里，我们探索了救生员在繁忙游泳池的真实场景中是否具有优势。实验 1 要求参与者通过触摸屏界面从繁忙泳池活动的片段中识别真实的溺水者。实验 2 试图复制第一项研究，包括眼动测量。实验 3 改变了方法，使用遮挡方法，即目标出现后不久，片段被冻结和模糊。结果表明存在经验效应，救生员比非救生员更频繁、更快地发现溺水者。在两组之间的眼动中没有发现明显的差异；因此，我们不能得出结论，救生员更快的反应是由于更好的扫描策略。不同的方法学方法表明遮挡方法具有更大的效应量，这支持了越来越多的证据，即遮挡可能是一种比传统反应时间测试更好的动态目标检测测试。这项研究表明，清晰的救生员经验效应适用于有大量游泳者和真实事件的真实泳池环境。它可以用于为救生员培训工具和评估提供信息。
