Friendly fire is a situation in which an individual soldier or troop mistakenly attack friendly force in an attempt to attack the enemy
In the light of signal detection theory, for a
friendly fire to occur, the individual must make a judgment whether the sensory
experience he/she is exposed to is due to background noise alone or to the
background noise plus a signal in order to determine whether the faint target(friendly forces) is an enemy
or not. For the individual/troops to make this judgment, it is the function of
two things which are;
1.
Their perceptual sensitivity
2.
Their decision criteria
Perceptual sensitivity:
perceptual sensitivity is an organism’s ability to detect a signal, this
encompasses how well or fine their sight and hearing are in order for them to
differentiate an enemy troop from their own troop.
Decision criteria: as much as their
perceptual sensitivity will be affected by distance and other factors, they
need decision criteria- an organism’s rule for how much evidence it needs
before responding. Therefore a soldier might engage a rule of decision that,
when in doubt and not sure/certain of sensory information reaching you, ‘shoot
to kill’ in other to be on the safer sides, as it might be an enemy troop and if
you fail to shoot you will definitely get shot.
More
so, such a type of decision criteria discussed above is associated with a high
payoff matrix; the pattern of benefits and cost associated with certain types
of responses, in this case survival.
Perceptual illusion
and selective attention perception
Another
thing that could be responsible for friendly fire is perceptual illusion.
According to Bankole 2014, our perception is very accurate but it is not
perfect. Illusion occurs when the perceptual processes that normally help us to
correctly perceive the world around us are fooled by a particular situation
that can fool an individual perceptual processes in the case of friendly fire
includes fog, smoke, heavy sounds form explosion, and even our emotional states
as noted by Tope Bankole 2014, he said our emotion, mindset, expectations, and
the context in which our sensation occurs all have a profound influence on
perception.
Looking
at the context in which friendly fire occur, it is place envelop in fear and as
such, individuals who gather their sensory experiences under such war context
are nervous and agitated, not to forget, that the environment(war
zone/warfront) atmosphere is filled with high heat and carbon monoxide(CO) and
other chemical compounds that reduced the atmospheric oxygen content available.
Under a low level of oxygen, coupled with emotional instability, nervousness
and agitation, an individual could easily fall into hallucination, thereby
having a distorted perception. Hence, such an individual might perceive a
friendly troop to be enemy and shoot under agitation.
Also,
noteworthy of mentioning is fog of war and selective attention perception. During
fog of war, those who are experiencing the fog are experiencing emotional
overload. There are more emotional input than the bearer can deal with, this
emotional charge input happens at a rate higher than the receiver can deal with
or resolve. The human brain can only deal with so much input(in much the same
way as a microprocessor saturates). When the volume of the data received is
greater than the speed at which these information can be processed, it create a
fog or twilight. The data or sensational inputs from various sources, eyes,
skin, and ears(noise, useful information and commands), exceed the data rate at
which it can be processed. When this situation arises, the individuals
experiencing it becomes incapacitated of selective attention perception as they
tend to have divided attention ie, divided attention between commands, noise
and useful information. As a result, they’ll become incapable of integrating
their sensory information available unto them into a coherent whole.
According to Broadbent 1958, our
ability to process information is capacity limited. Information from the senses
passes ‘in parallel’ to a short term store known as temporary buffer system.
The various types of information are presented in their raw format and then
passed to a selective filter that operates on the basis of the information’s
physical properties, selecting one source for further analysis and rejecting
the others. Information allowed through the filters reaches a limited-capacity
channel that correspond to the ‘span of consciousness’ or what we experience as
happening now (James 1890). The information allowed through the filter is
analyzed in that it is recognized, possibly rehearsed and then transferred to
the motor effector (muscle) producing an appropriate response.
Picture credit:andelino.wordpress.com
Reference
Henry Gleitman, James Gross,
Daniel Reisberg (2011). Psychology, Eight Edition. Sensation, 4, 139- 141.NewYork: W.W. Norton&company
Henry Gleitman, James Gross,
Daniel Reisberg (2011). Psychology, Eight Edition. Perception, 5, 180-214. NewYork: W.W. Norton&company
Richard Gross(2010). Psychology;
the science of mind and behavior, sixth edition. Attention, 13, 199-200. UK Hodder Education
Tope Bankole (2014). Hand Book on
Sensation & Perception; Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Perception, 5, 72-78.
Tobi Prints Alakia, Ibadan.
Wikipedia. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/fog%of%war
Support Us
0 comments: