Situational awareness: the trainability of the near-threshold information acquisition dimension

Ten subjects participated in training to identify abstract visual stimuli under three successively more difficult protocols where the stimuli (targets) were small, and target-on time was 67 ms (2,100 trials) or 33 ms (2,100 trials). Joysticks and push buttons were used for responses. The protocols were target detection, recognition, and identification. Backward masking was used to control visual access time. The experimental design was repeated measurements, each subject as his own control. Subjects exceeded 95% correct responses early under the 67 ms target-on time condition. For the 33 ms condition, most subjects achieved between 70 and 95% correct responses at the end of the training. Differences between protocol challenges at 33 ms were significant (at or beyond p < 0.01). The outcome of this study is consistent with our concept of situational awareness described in our overview paper.