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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1495812

Blended police firearms training improves performance in shoot/don't shoot scenarios: A systematic replication with police cadets

Provisionally accepted
Joshua Olma Joshua Olma 1*Christine Sutter Christine Sutter 1Sandra Sülzenbrück Sandra Sülzenbrück 2
  • 1 German Police University, Münster, Germany
  • 2 Westfälische Hochschule, Gelsenkirchen, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Senior police officers' tactical gaze control and visual attention improve with an individual videobased police firearms training. To validate the efficacy of said intervention training, a previous experiment was systematically replicated with a sample of N = 52 second-year police cadets. Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention training that focused on situational awareness, tactical gaze control, and visual attention, or an active control training that addressed traditional marksmanship skills. In a pre-and post-test, they had to engage in dynamic shoot/don't shoot video scenarios in an indoor firing range. Overall, the previous findings were replicated: Baseline levels of performance were elevated, yet the intervention group significantly improved their response time and time until the first hit. False positive decision-making cannot be reported at all; false negatives were marginal in the pre-test and eliminated after training. Further, the outcomes of the previous sample of senior officers and the present sample of cadets are compared and lead to the conclusion that the presented approach is a valuable extension of current training standards for both senior police officers and police cadets.

    Keywords: Police, Vision, Attention, training, decision-making, Shooting, experience, Expertise

    Received: 13 Sep 2024; Accepted: 25 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Olma, Sutter and Sülzenbrück. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Joshua Olma, German Police University, Münster, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.